the subject of much controversy, for it was suggested that while he offered to mediate he really acted as a partisan of Prussia. For his services to Prussia he received as a present the forest of Schmalkalden. He was with the Prussian headquarters in Bohemia during the latter part of the war.
With the year 1866 the political rôle which Ernest had played ended. The result was perhaps not quite equal to his expectations, but it must be remembered how difficult was the position of the minor German princes; and he quoted with great satisfaction the words used in 1871 by the emperor William at Versailles, that “to him in no small degree was due the establishment of the empire.” He was a man of varied tastes, a good musician—he composed several operas and songs—and a keen sportsman, a quality in which he differed from his brother. Notwithstanding his Liberalism, he had a great regard for the dignity of his rank and family, and in his support of constitutional government would never have sacrificed the essential prerogatives of sovereignty. He died at Reinhardsbrunn on the 22nd of August 1893. In 1842 the duke married Alexandrine, daughter of the grandduke of Baden; there were no children by this marriage and the succession to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha passed therefore to the children of his younger brother Albert. By Albert’s marriage contract the duchy could not be held together with the English crown; thus his eldest son, afterwards Edward VII., was passed over and it came to his second son, Alfred, duke of Edinburgh (1844–1900). When Alfred died without sons in July 1900 the succession to the duchy passed to a younger brother Arthur, duke of Connaught; but the duke and his son, Arthur, passed on their claim to Charles Edward, duke of Albany (b. 1884), who became duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in succession to his uncle Alfred. In 1905 Charles Edward married Victoria Adelaide (b. 1885), princess of Schleswig-Holstein, by whom he has a son John Leopold (b. 1906).
Duke Ernest was something of a writer. He brought out an account of the travels in Egypt and Abyssinia which he undertook in 1862 as Reise des Herzogs Ernst von Sachsen-Koburg-Gotha nach Ägypten (Leipzig, 1864); and he published his memoirs, Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit (Berlin, 1887–1889). This work is in three volumes and contains much valuable information on a most critical period of German history; there is an English translation by P. Andreae (1888–1890).
See also Sir T. Martin, Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort (1875–1880); Hon. C. Grey, Early Years of the Prince Consort (1867); A. Ohorn, Herzog Ernst II., ein Lebensbild (Leipzig, 1894); and E. Tempeltey, Herzog Ernst von Koburg und das Jahr 1866 (Berlin, 1898). (J. W. He.)
ERNEST AUGUSTUS (1771–1851), king of Hanover and duke
of Cumberland, fifth son of the English king George III., was
born at Kew on the 5th of June 1771. Having studied at the
university of Göttingen, he entered the Hanoverian army, serving
as a leader of cavalry when war broke out between Great Britain
and France in 1793, and winning a reputation for bravery.
He lost the sight of one eye at the battle of Tournai in May 1794,
and when Hanover withdrew from the war in 1795 he returned
to England, being made lieutenant-general in the British army
in 1799. In the same year he was created duke of Cumberland
and Teviotdale and granted an allowance of £12,000 a year, after
which he held several lucrative military positions in England,
and began to attend the sittings of the House of Lords and to
take part in political life. A stanch Tory, the duke objected to
all proposals of reform, especially to the granting of any relief
to the Roman Catholics, and had great influence with his brother
the prince regent, afterwards King George IV., in addition to being
often consulted by the Tory leaders. In 1810 he was severely
injured by an assassin, probably his valet Sellis, who was found
dead; and subsequently two men were imprisoned for asserting
that the duke had murdered his valet. Recovering from his
wounds, Cumberland again proceeded to the seat of war; and
having been made a British field-marshal, was in command of the
Hanoverian army during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, being
present, although not in action, at the battle of Leipzig. In
May 1815 Ernest married his cousin, Frederica (1778–1841),
daughter of Charles II. duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and widow
of Frederick, prince of Solms-Braunfels, a union which was
very repugnant to his mother Queen Charlotte, and was disliked
in England, where the duke’s strong Toryism had made him
unpopular. Parliament refused to increase his allowance from
£18,000, to which it had been raised in 1804, to £24,000 a year,
and indignant at the treatment he received the duke spent some
years in Berlin. Returning to England after the accession of
George IV. in 1820, his political power was again considerable,
while deaths in the royal family made it likely that he would
succeed to the throne. Although his personal influence with the
sovereign ceased upon the death of George IV. in 1830, the duke
continued to oppose all measures for the extension of civil and
religious liberty, including the Reform Bill of 1832; and his
unpopularity was augmented by suspicions that he had favoured
the formation of Orange lodges in the army. When William IV.
died in June 1837, the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover were
separated; and Ernest, as the nearest male heir of the late king,
became king of Hanover. At once cancelling the constitution
which William had given to his kingdom in 1833, he acted as an
absolute monarch, and the constitution which he sanctioned in
1840 was permeated with his own illiberal ideas. In German
politics he was vigilant and active, and mindful of the material
interests of his country. His reign, however, was a stormy one,
and serious trouble between king and people had arisen when
he died at Herrenhausen on the 18th of November 1851 (see
Hanover: History). In spite of his arbitrary rule and his
reactionary ideas the king was popular among his subjects,
and his statue in Hanover bears the words “Dem Landes Vater
sein treues Volk.” Ernest, who is generally regarded as the
ablest of the sons of George III., left an only child, George, who
succeeded him as king of Hanover.
See C. A. Wilkinson, Reminiscences of the Court and Times of King Ernest of Hanover (London, 1886); von Malortie, König Ernst August (Hanover, 1861); and the various histories of Great Britain and Hanover for the period.
ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST (1707–1781), German theologian
and philologist, was born on the 4th of August 1707, at Tennstädt
in Thuringia, of which place his father was pastor, besides being
superintendent of the electoral dioceses of Thuringia, Salz and
Sangerhausen. At the age of sixteen he was sent to the celebrated
Saxon cloister school of Pforta (Schulpforta). At twenty
he entered the university of Wittenberg, and studied afterwards
at the university of Leipzig. In 1730 he was made master in
the faculty of philosophy. In the following year he accepted the
office of conrector in the Thomas school of Leipzig, of which
J. M. Gesner was then rector, an office to which Ernesti succeeded
in 1734. He was, in 1742, named professor extraordinarius
of ancient literature in the university of Leipzig, and in 1756
professor ordinarius of rhetoric. In the same year he received
the degree of doctor of theology, and in 1759 was appointed
professor ordinarius in the faculty of theology. Through his
learning and his manner of discussion, he co-operated with S. J.
Baumgarten of Halle (1706–1757) in disengaging the current
dogmatic theology from its many scholastic and mystical excrescences,
and thus paved a way for a revolution in theology.
He died, after a short illness, in his seventy-sixth year, on the
11th of September 1781.
It is perhaps as much from the impulse which Ernesti gave to sacred and profane criticism in Germany, as from the intrinsic excellence of his own works in either department, that he must derive his reputation as a philologist or theologian. With J. S. Semler he co-operated in the revolution of Lutheran theology, and in conjunction with Gesner he instituted a new school in ancient literature. He detected grammatical niceties in Latin, in regard to the consecution of tenses which had escaped preceding critics. His canons are, however, not without exceptions. As an editor of the Greek classics, Ernesti hardly deserves to be named beside his Dutch contemporaries, Tiberius Hemsterhuis (1685–1766), L. C. Valckenaer (1715–1785), David Ruhnken (1723–1798), or his colleague J. J. Reiske (1716–1774). The higher criticism was not even attempted by Ernesti. But to him and to Gesner is due the credit of having formed, by discipline
