Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Jubilee and Coronation Medal pair awarded to Her Serene Highness Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg

Jubilee 1887, gold, with lady’s narrow 1897 clasp (H.S.H. Princess Victor of Hohenlohe.) with double ring suspension; Coronation 1902, silver, unnamed as issued, both on lady’s bow ribands, good very fine and extremely rare (2)
£1800-2200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Members of the Nobility and The Royal Household.

View
Collection

Provenance: Gleichen Family Decorations and Award, Spink, December 1990.

Her Serene Highness Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg was born Laura Williamina Seymour on 17 December 1832, the daughter of Admiral Sir George Seymour and his wife Georgiana, granddaughter of the 4th Earl of Berkeley and a great-granddaughter of the 2nd Duke of Richmond. Her direct ancestor Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, was the eldest brother of King Henry VIII’s queen consort, Jane Seymour, and was Lord Protector of England during the minority of his nephew King Edward VI. She married Prince Victor Ferdinand Franz Eugen Gustaf Adolf Constantin Friedrich of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a nephew of Queen Victoria, (and who, as a young officer in the Royal Navy had served under his future father-in-law Admiral Seymour in H.M.S. Cumberland in the 1850’s), on 26 January 1861, having been created Countess von Gleichen by Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha on the eve of her marriage.

Upon her brother Francis succeeding his cousin as Marquess of Hertford in 1870, Queen Victoria granted her the rank and precedence of a daughter of a Marquess, and on 15 December 1885 Queen Victoria finally gave her permission to share her husband’s princely title within the British Empire (before then she had been known as the Countess von Gleichen). She and her husband had one son and three daughters prior to her husband’s death in December 1891. Princess Victor herself died on 13 February 1912; the following year her children were granted the unique right to take precedence before the daughters and younger sons of English dukes.

Sold with a photograph of the recipient, taken from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.

For the medals awarded to Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg’s daughter, Lady Feodora Gleichen, see Lot 136.