Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/D'Este, Augustus Frederick
D'ESTE, Sir AUGUSTUS FREDERICK (1794–1848), was son of the Duke of Sussex. On 4 April 1793 the Duke of Sussex, youngest son of George III, was married by an English clergyman at Rome to Lady Augusta Murray, second daughter of John, fourth earl of Dunmore. The marriage ceremony was repeated on 6 Dec. following, in St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London. George III was much displeased at the union. The marriage was annulled by the court of arches in August 1794, the provisions of the Royal Marriage Act (12 George III) having declared that marriages of descendants contracted without the royal assent should be invalid. Two children were the fruit of the marriage: Ellen Augusta, who in 1845 married Sir Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro, and the above-named Augustus Frederick. The name of D'Este, anciently belonging to the house of Brunswick, was given to the two children, and their mother, on separating from the duke in 1806, assumed the name of De Ameland. D'Este was born in 1794, and entered the army as lieutenant in the royal fusiliers, which regiment he accompanied to America, where, as aide-de-camp to Sir John Lambert, he participated in the attack on New Orleans. In 1817 he received the command of a troop in the 9th lancers, and five years later was appointed major in the 4th royal Irish dragoons. In 1824 he was promoted to a lieutenant-colonelcy, and became full colonel in 1838, the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. From William IV in 1830 he received a knight commandership of the Hanoverian Guelphic order, a pension of 500l. a year out of the civil list, and the appointment of deputy-ranger of St. James's Park and Hyde Park. ‘The chancellor,’ writes Greville in 1831, ‘told me that the young man Sir Augustus d'Este had behaved very ill, having filed a bill in chancery, into which he had put all his father's love letters, written thirty years ago, to perpetuate evidence; that it was all done without the Duke of Sussex's consent, but that D'Este had got Lushington's opinion that the marriage was valid on the ground that the Marriage Act only applied to marriages contracted here, whereas this was contracted at Rome. He said Lushington was a great authority, but that he had no doubt he was wrong. The king is exceedingly annoyed at it.’ In 1834 he presented to the Duke of Cambridge, viceroy of Hanover, a memorial entreating his ‘powerful intercession’ with the king for the restoration of his rights as a legitimate son of the Duke of Sussex. Nine years later, in 1843, when the Duke of Sussex died, D'Este preferred to the House of Lords a claim to succeed to his father's honours. The house, after consulting with the judges, resolved that the claim was not established. D'Este died unmarried on Thursday, 28 Dec. 1848, at the age of fifty-four.
[Gent. Mag. 1849, i. 203–4; Dillon's Case of the Children of the Duke of Sussex; Times, 29 Dec. 1848; Greville Memoirs, 1875, ii. 195.]