Prince Edward was created Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Earl of Dublin on 23 April 1799[2] and, a few weeks later, appointed a General and commander-in-chief of British forces in the Maritime Provinces of North America.

[6] Edward was also the first British prince to enter the United States since the recognition of American independence in 1783, travelling to Boston on foot from Lower Canada in 1794.

Edward guided Charles de Salaberry throughout his career, and made sure that the famous commander was duly honoured after his leadership during the Battle of Chateauguay.

[12] He served successfully in the West Indies campaign the following year, and was commander of the British camp at La Coste during the Battle of Martinique, for which he was mentioned in dispatches by General Charles Grey for his "great Spirit and Activity".

He was instrumental in shaping that settlement's military defences, protecting its important Royal Navy base, as well as influencing the city's and colony's socio-political and economic institutions.

Extensively renovated, the estate became known as "Prince's Lodge" as the couple hosted numerous dignitaries, including Louis-Phillippe of Orléans (the future King of the French).

[note 1] Appointed Governor of Gibraltar by the War Office, gazetted 23 March 1802,[17] the Duke took up his post on 24 May with express orders from the government to restore discipline among the drunken troops.

His brother Frederick, the Duke of York, then Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, recalled him in May 1803 after receiving reports of the mutiny, but despite this direct order he refused to return to England until his successor arrived.

[7] As a consolation for the ending of his active military career when he was 35, he was promoted to the rank of field marshal[4] and appointed Ranger of Hampton Court Park on 5 September 1805.

[7] Though it was a tendency shared to some extent with his brothers, the Duke's excesses as a military disciplinarian may have been due less to natural disposition and more to what he had learned from his tutor Baron Wangenheim.

He took a continuing interest in the social experiments of Robert Owen, voted for Catholic emancipation, and supported literary, Bible, and abolitionist societies.

[7] Following the death of Princess Charlotte of Wales in November 1817, the only legitimate grandchild of George III at the time, the royal succession began to look uncertain.

Brought up in Geneva as the ostensible son of Thimothée Schencker, his father promised to find him a post in the UK civil service and in 1809 he was appointed a clerk in the Foreign Office, being retired with a pension in 1826.

Sewell would rise in Lower Canadian government to hold such offices as Attorney General, Chief Justice, and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.

The Duke supported Sewell's plan to unify the colonies, offering comments and critiques that would later be cited by Lord Durham (1839) and participants of the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences (1864).

Nothing can be better arranged than the whole thing is or more perfectly, and when I see an opening it is fully my intention to point the matter out to Lord Bathurst and put the paper in his hands, without however telling him from whom I have it, though I shall urge him to have some conversation with you relative to it.

Allow me to beg of you to put down the proportions in which you think the thirty members of the Representatives Assembly ought to be furnished by each Province, and to suggest whether you would not think two Lieutenant-Governors with two Executive Councils sufficient for an executive government of the whole, namely one for the two Canadas, and one for New Brunswick and the two small dependencies of Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, the former to reside in Montreal, and the latter at whichever of the two (following) situations may be considered most central for the two provinces whether Annapolis Royal or Windsor.

But, at all events, should you consider in your Executive Councils requisite I presume there cannot be a question of the expediency of comprehending the two small islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with Nova Scotia.

"We all went to church and heard a charity sermon preached by a Dr Crane before the Duke of Kent", wrote Adams in a diary entry from August 1815.

Sculpted by Sebastian Gahagan and installed in January 1824, the statue is seven feet two inches (2.18 m) tall and represents the Duke in his Field Marshal's uniform, over which he wears his ducal dress and the regalia of the Order of the Garter.

On his returning to England on finding that he was unable to live in any degree suitable to his rank, and at the same time to discharge his debts, he generously resolved again to go to America, and to remain there, living solely on his pay as an Officer, till his debts were entirely liquidated, to which purpose he gave up the whole of his income allowed him by Government, and in this resolution he persisted, till repeated bilious attacks compelled him to quit that country.We are sensible that an idea once prevailed that his Royal Highness, in early life, had participated in several of the fashionable vices of the age; but nothing was ever more remote from the truth—for it may be truly said of the Duke of Kent (what can be said of very few men of Rank) that he never was known to be intoxicated, or ever won or lost a farthing at any kind of play in his life; that he never endeavored to seduce the wife of another, or even made a promise he did not do his utmost to perform—his rigid adherence to his word is so remarkable that no consideration has ever induced him to swerve from a promise he has once given.

a year of his income for the relief of private indigence and distress—throughout all British America he was so universally beloved, that the loss of his presence is reckoned one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen the country.

And we have no hesitation in expressing our conviction, that no measure will more strongly contribute to pacify and reconcile all ranks of people in Ireland, than the presence of his Royal Highness in that country, where we now understand it is the intention of the Government to employ him.