Princess Marie of Baden, wife of the 11th Duke of Hamilton (8th of Brandon)

This is a fairly short question: Was Marie styled Her Grand Ducal Highness
or Her Grace?

Francois R. Velde...

Short anwer: the latter (in Britain).

Long side comment: the Time of Jan 10, 1843 reproduced an article from the
Spectator, running thus.

Precedence of the Peerage

"Principiis obsta!"

All over the Grand Duchy of Baden (through which I have recently travelled) it
is currently reported and believed, that the Marquis of Douglas is now in
England for the purpose of endeavouring to procure for his bride-elect
precedence next to our Royal Family, so as to give her place above the whole
peerage of Great Britain; and as this report has found its way into some of the
German papers, it may be very well submitted to public notice in some of our
own.

The Princess Marie is the daughter of Mademoiselle Stephanie Beauharnais, by the
late Grand Duke Charles of Baden; and the pretext for demanding in her behalf
precedence next to our blood-royal is that our Queen married Prince Albert, and
that his brother Ernest married the Princess Alexandrine, of Baden, and that she
is first cousin to the Princess Marie; and it is pretended, that as the
Princess Marie, by this chain of relationship, is in a distant manner connected
with the Queen of England, she ought to have precedence before all the princes
of our British peerage; and that the blood of the Plantagenets and Stuarts, so
largely and even legitimately to be found there, ought to retire before that of
Beauharnais and the Margraves of Baden. Many such marriages have taken place
abroad without being followed by any similar result.

During the old French Revolution, a M. de Pouilly, a simple untitled gentleman,
emigrated into Austria, took service under the imperial standard, and married
the aunt of Prince Albert, then Princess of Coburg, and sister of King Leopold.
Previously to the marriage, the Coburg family procured him the title of Count de
Mensdorf. But did they ask that she should have precedence before all the
Austrian or Saxon nobility? No; such a thing would have raised a laugh from one
end of the empire to the other. She lived and died as Countess of Mensdorf, and
subject to appear at Court as the wife of a count, and after all the wives of
the counts who were before her husband.

The Prince of Furstemberg, a mediatized count of the empire, and a subject of
Austria in respect of his Bohemian possessions, married the sister of the
reigning Grand Duke of Baden; but he never thought of asking precedence for her
before all the Austrian nobility, although there is some distant connexion
between her house and that of Austria.

If Prince Puckler Muskau, who is a Prussian subject, were to marry a princess of
Hohenzollern Hechingen, who would be a distant blood relation of the King of
Prussia, would that be a ground for asking precedence for her above all the
Prussian nobility? The bare idea of such a thing would set the whole aristocracy
in a ferment.

Supposing that a Duc et Pair of the old French monarchy had married some Italian
Principessa, who, through the Medici, might have been remotely connected with
the reigning family, would he on that account have asked precedence for her
above the wives of all his superiors? Depend on it, such families as those of De
Rohan and Montmorency would have most effectively protested against any such
preference.

Why, then, should it be given at the British Court, in disparagement of the
wives of the Dukes of Norfolk, Newcastle, Northumberland, and Somerset—names
fraught with historical reminiscences, and interwoven with our national glory?
Why even should she have precedence of any wife of the Duke of Wellington (one
of the newest of our dukes), who is also Grandee of Spain and Prince of
Waterloo? Supposing a Dutch nobleman had married any one connected by marriage
with the present King of Holland, would that have given him a right to claim
precedence above our Duke in his capacity of foreign Prince? Any such claim
would be treated as unwarrantable.

But let us try the matter by another test. We all know that the family of the
Earl of Denbigh and that of the Emperor of Austria is derived from a common
ancestor; and that the relationship, although distant, is acknowledged. Let us
imagine, then, that a Prince Diedrichstein were to marry a daughter of the earl:
would they give her, in Austria, any precedence in right of her Imperial blood?
Not an inch: she would be obliged to appear on all occasions as the wife of her
husband.

The peerage of England has been considered as one of the most distinguished
bodies of nobility in the world; not merely on account of its high privilege of
saying " No !" to the will of the Sovereign, but because it stands above an
equestrian order (I mean the ancient gentry of Great Britain), which contains in
it, perhaps, more noble blood and illustrious de-scent, and respectability of
character, than all the nobility of all the little German principalities put
together in a heap. What, then, will be the consequence if we give to the
Princess Marie, merely because the Queen is by marriage connected with her, a
precedence which, mutatis mutandis, would be awarded to her by no continental
monarch? Why, the British peerage must sink down from the eminence on which it
has so long stood; and we must proclaim to the world that the constitution of
our country is incapable of bestowing on any native, whatever his merit or
descent, a dignity equal to that of the daughter of a Prince of Baden and
Mademoiselle Beauharnais; and that in this respect our English high nobility
are far inferior to those of Austria, Prussia, France, or even to those of
Holland!

If ever a time should arrive when our high nobility should sink thus low in
European estimation, it may be fairly doubted whether they will be worth
maintaining either for the sake of use or ornament; and if connexion with the
Queen, through her marriage with Prince Albert, is to be a ground for
interposing people between the Royal Family and the Premier Peer, the British
high nobility may expect most extraordinary superiors—such as they have never
yet seen, nor heard of, nor dreamt of.

During the present reign there has been too much obsequiousness to the Germans
about our Court. Out of respect for the wishes of the Queen, we have allowed,
without a murmur or remonstrance, some to occupy a high place at her table, who
at Hanover, or any inferior German Court, would never have emerged from the
antechamber. This has let us down low enough in the eyes of the German
aristocracy, and has exalted their pretensions in a corresponding degree; but
the claim of precedence on behalf of the future Duchess of Hamilton Douglas
will, if granted, sink the English peerage lower in European estimation than
almost any misfortune that could befall it; so much so, that if hereafter any
Chandos or Courtenay should even exceed the merits of a Nelson or a Wellington,
the better way of rewarding him will be, not to give him an English Dukedom, but
to beg the Emperor of Austria to make him a Prince, and then his wife will,
perhaps, be safe from the pretensions of any German lady who may condescend to
honour the blood of Douglas with her preference.

Charles von Hamm