Born in 1774, he was created Duke of Cambridge in 1801. In 1794 he      
          was captured by the French in Flanders but escaped unrecognised. He        
          was highly spoken of as being courageous and amiable, as an                
          industrious and efficient soldier. In 1795 he was wounded and called       
          back to England. In 1813 he was sent to Hannover as commander of its       
          army and, when the Congress of Vienna had raised the Electorate to a       
          Kingdom, he was appointed Governor General.                                
             As distinct from his brothers, he had neither debts nor mistresses.     
          After the death of Princess Charlotte of Wales, his elder brother, the     
          Duke of Clarence, asked him to look around to find a wife for him.         
          Adolphus wrote such glowing reports of Princess Auguste of                 
          Hessen-Kassel that the Duke of Clarence was greatly amused, saying,        
          "He's in love with her himself. I'll write and tell him to take her,       
          bless him!" And that is what happened: Adolphus, aged forty-four,          
          married the not yet 21-year-old Auguste, on 7 May 1818. In March 1819,     
          a son, George, was born, followed by Auguste in July 1822 and much         
          later, in 1833, another daughter, Mary Adelaide.                           
             Adolphus, although the most agreeable of George III's sons, was         
          eccentric bordering sometimes on the disturbing, to the point of the       
          Duke of Wellington proclaiming him "as mad as Bedlam". As a young man      
          he read a lot, was interested in science, loved music, and played the      
          violin expertly.                                                           
             They spent many years in Hannover. When his son was still young, he     
          caught scarlet fever and the doctors, fearing he might die, sent for       
          the Duke of Cambridge. In his frenzy while attending a dinner, the         
          Duke took a bottle of Steinberger Rhine wine to the boy's bedroom and      
          forced him to drink a glass. The boy improved and for many years           
          Steinberger wine was drunk on young George's birthday.                     
             In 1837 King William IV died, which separated Great Britain from        
          Hannover. Victoria became Queen of Great Britain and her uncle, Ernest     
          Augustus, King of Hannover, which made the Duke of Cambridge's             
          position redundant. Consequently, he and his family returned to            
          England to reside at Cambridge House, Piccadilly.                          
             To his great disappointment, his son did not marry Queen Victoria       
          but the ineligible Louisa Fairbrother, rumoured to be the mother of        
          two illegitimate children. Louisa was never accepted in the family and     
          went through life as Mrs. FitzGeorge.                                      
             In June 1850, the 76-year-old Duke had a violent stomach attack         
          which left him exhausted. From then on he began to decline; so his         
          son, in military service, came back to be with his father. According       
          to his son, he died quite unexpectedly, calmly and quietly. His            
          youngest daughter, Mary, had been with him, but Princess Auguste,          
          Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived seven hours after he        
          had died.                                                                  
 

Source: Leo van de Pas