When my bride and I moved to Dwight, Illinois, in 1985 we purchased a house located only a few blocks from a 20 acre park, Renfrew Park. This was good planning on our part. When our kids made their appearance in the nineties, they loved playing in the park, and we have many fond family memories of fun there. We quickly learned that the name of Renfrew Park commemorated the visit of British royalty to our little town in September 1860, just before the Civil War.
Prince Edward had been carefully brought up by his parents, perhaps too carefully. Kept from free association with people outside of tutors and family, he viewed his trip to Canada and America in 1860 as a great adventure. It was. Edward was the first Prince of Wales to visit the United States. He made a great impression with his affability and his gift for speaking to everyone, high and low, with friendly interest. Officially traveling incognito as “Baron Renfrew”, one of the lesser titles of the Prince of Wales, on the eve of the Civil War, he charmed almost all Americans he encountered, north and south, drawing huge crowds during his 2600 mile tour of the country from September 20, 1860-October 20, 1860.
One of his minor stops was the Village of Dwight at the beginning of his tour. He visited a corn farm and then went prairie chicken shooting where Renfrew Park is now located. The Prince enjoyed himself immensely and relished the rest he had from the huge crowds that came out to meet him in larger communities.
One might regard the visit of the Prince to America as merely a pleasant minor historical footnote, but I think it was slightly more than that. On his return the Prince told his parents how much he had enjoyed his trip to America and how friendly and kind he found the Americans he met to be. Perhaps this memory helped inspire his father, Prince Albert, to literally rise from his death bed, on November 30, 1861 to soften a note being sent by the British government to Washington over the Trent Affair:
The Queen … should have liked to have seen the expression of a hope [in the message to Seward] that the American captain did not act under instructions, or, if he did that he misapprehended them [and] that the United States government must be fully aware that the British Government could not allow its flag to be insulted, and the security of her mail communications to be placed in jeopardy, and [that] Her Majesty’s Government are unwilling to believe that the United States Government intended wantonly to put an insult upon this country and to add to their many distressing complications by forcing a question of dispute upon us, and that we are therefore glad to believe … that they would spontaneously offer such redress as alone could satisfy this country, viz: the restoration of the unfortunate passengers and a suitable apology.
Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861, his greatest service to his adopted country being his last one: an avoidance of a war with the United States, the kindness and friendliness shown to his son no doubt helping to convince him that such a war must be avoided if possible, and could be avoided with honor.
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Imagine what would have happend if the young prince had been tragically killed in a train or carriage accident in Canada, before he even got to US soil. He never takes his tour and never reports home.
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Prince Albert, already weak, dies of heartbreak; the Trent Affair is then addressed by a royal family and English nation in the throes of mourning and not well-received bonhomie.
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Do the British still decide against conflict or does the USA put aside its internal differences and unite in another war against England?
“Do the British still decide against conflict or does the USA put aside its internal differences and unite in another war against England?”
Seward thought the country would unite against England in a war, and suggested starting such a war prior to the firing on Sumter. Seward was mad on that point, and gravely underestimated the determination of the Confederates to make a new nation.
The title of Baron of Renfrew has been held by the Heir Apparent in Scotland since the future James I in 1404. Renfrew is known as “the cradle of the Royal Stuarts”
It is not a peerage, but a mere feudal barony, the equivalent of an English lordship of the manor. The Stuarts are descended from a Breton family (FitzFlaad) of “bonnet lairds” – untitled country gentry, like English ‘squires – and one of them, Walter Stewart (High Steward of Scotland) married Robert the Bruce’s daughter Marjory in 1315. Their son Robert became King Robert II as heir of line to his maternal uncle, David II in 1371.
Mary Queen of Scots adopted the name Stuart (the French spelling)
Edward’s use of the name is a pleasant reminder of his family’s humble origins
It amazes me that to this day people think that Southerners prefer being overrun by enemies in blue coats to being overrun by enemies in red coats.
To those who will say, “… but at least they were Americans!”: If you find out your wife is having an affair, would it really make you feel better to discover it is with your brother rather than with a stranger?
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