The Early Years of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort

e, or elder branch of the great Saxon family. That branch had, however, lost its birthright in the course of the 16th century. Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, had been the protector of Martin Luther, and was one of the first to embrace the doctrines of the Eeformed Church, of which he was the most powerful supporter. His immediate successors adhered to the same religious opinions, and after the defeat of John Frederick the Magnanimous by Charles V., at Muhlberg, in 1547, they paid the penalty of their devotion to the Protestant faith in the forced surrender of their inheritance to the younger, or Albertine branch of the family, by the descendants of which the Saxon throne is still occupied. It is not easy to trace the arrangement by which, on losing the electorate, now the kingdom of Saxony, the Ernestine branch acquired the several duchies still possessed by its descendants. It would be still more difficult to follow out the laws of succession?the intermarriages, etc., leading to the redistribution or interchange of territory, in consequence of which these different duchies came into the possession now of this, now of that member of the family. The custom of dividing and subdividing their inheritance among their sons seems long to have prevailed with these Saxon dukes. Thus the dukedoms of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, of Saxe-Meiningen, of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld were, on the death, in 1679, of Ernest the Pious, du...