George IV

King of Great Britain (r. 1820-1830)

• Born: August 12, 1762
• Birthplace: St. James' Palace, London, England
• Died: June 26, 1830
• Place of death: Windsor Castle, Windsor, England

Through his incompetence and disreputable personal behavior, King George IV eroded traditional British respect for and reliance upon the monarchy as a functioning governing institution, thereby inadvertently strengthening the powers of Parliament and weakening those of the British monarchy.

Early Life

George Augustus Frederick—the eventual George IV, king of Great Britain—was the first child of George III (who reigned from 1760 to 1820) and Queen Charlotte Sophia, the former princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. As heir to the throne of one of the world’s great powers, George received the finest education possible, in accordance with the standards of the eighteenth century. Beginning at the age of five, he was privately tutored under a disciplined regimen, learning the classics, English, and the rudiments of French, German, and Italian. He would eventually achieve fluency in French. At the age of thirteen, the rigor of George’s education was intensified by order of his father, the king. His tutors added history, religion, ethics, law, government, mathematics, and the natural sciences to his studies, while in his spare time he learned to play the cello, fence, box, sing, and appreciate the fine arts. Music, sculpture, and painting would remain lifelong interests.

As a child, George was universally popular with his teachers, family, the court, and friends. He was variously described as amiable, affectionate, cheerful, and intelligent, while he achieved a reputation as an enthusiastic and responsive pupil. He already possessed that wit and charm for which he would later become both famous and notorious. Altogether, George’s early years were as promising as any enjoyed by a Prince of Wales (the traditional title bestowed by the English upon the heir to the throne).

The future king’s difficulties began in his late teens, when he developed an obsessive desire for heavy drinking and womanizing. In these endeavors, he was assisted by numerous roguish companions, an excellent physique, and irresistible handsomeness. Soon, his drunken escapades, numerous love affairs, and casual sexual liaisons became well known to the British public. His heavy spending, supported by the taxpayers, and his constant philandering cost him the esteem and affection of the nation. He never fully recovered from the playboy image he earned as the Prince of Wales.

George’s behavior also cost him the respect and trust of his father. King George III regularly excluded the prince from consultation on the affairs of state, while begging him to mend his ways. Relations between father and son became especially strained when, during the 1780’s, the prince gradually began to align himself with the opposition Whig Party. The Whigs generally favored liberal causes, such as Catholic emancipation, political reform, and the curtailment of the king’s prerogatives. Carlton House, the prince’s residence in London, became the meeting place for Whig politicians and intriguers. The Whigs’ opponents, the Tory Party, could remain in power, however, as long as George III reigned. The king nevertheless deeply resented the prince’s collusion in attacks upon his political favorites, the Tories.

Public disapproval of George III swelled during the so-called Regency Crisis of 1788-1789. The king suffered from a rare, hereditary metabolic disorder known as porphyria, whose effects upon the central nervous system caused extreme pain and sometimes insanity. When George III endured a particularly acute attack of the disease in late 1788, the prince and the Whigs scrambled to establish George IV as Prince Regent with unrestricted powers. George III’s sudden recovery in early 1789 caused much embarrassment for the prince and disappointment for the Whigs. The British people, who dearly loved George III, long remembered and resented the eagerness with which the prince hastened to supplant his father.

A new source of friction between the king and his son emerged after 1792, when Great Britain became involved in war with revolutionary France. The prince desired an important, active military command similar to those possessed by his younger brothers. George III refused to comply with his son’s request, citing the need for the prince to prepare himself for the kingship, as well as the foolishness of exposing to combat the heir to the throne. The young George’s vanity was wounded by this denial of the opportunity to participate in the military glory that others garnered. The quarrel between father and son lasted for almost two decades, as the war with France continued almost without respite until 1815.

George’s romantic life assumed some stability after 1785, when he married Mrs. Maria Anne Weld Fitzherbert (née Smythe), a wealthy widow who had been married twice before. The wedding ceremony and the prince’s relationship to his new wife were loosely guarded secrets, however, because the marriage was contracted without the king’s permission and Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Roman Catholic, both violations of British law. Despite bitter quarrels and prolonged separations, the couple remained devoted to each other until 1809, when they mutually agreed to end their relationship. The prince’s love for Mrs. Fitzherbert had not stopped his philandering entirely, merely slowing him down—the most important factor in the deterioration of their relations.

Although the king was much distressed by persistent rumors of George’s wedding, the illegality of the union with Mrs. Fitzherbert permitted a royal marriage. Burdened by stupendous debts and faced with the need to produce an heir to the throne, George married Princess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick in 1795, casting a covetous eye upon her dowry and income. This union was to become a marriage in name only, as George conceived an instant distaste for his bride. Sexual relations between the couple ceased after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte, in 1796. An informal separation was also arranged in that year, George claiming to be revolted by his wife’s vulgar behavior and conversation.

In late 1810, George III, slowed by blindness and old age, was struck once again by an acute attack of porphyria and lapsed into an insanity from which he never recovered. For a few months, the nation awaited the possibility of the king’s restoration to health. Discouraged by the doctors’ poor prognoses, Parliament voted to establish Prince George as regent with full royal powers, a position he assumed on February 5, 1811.

Life’s Work

The Whigs greeted George’s regency with high expectations. With the pro-Tory George III out of the way, they anticipated an invitation from his son to form a new government. Unfortunately for them, the prince’s political attitudes had gradually changed markedly over the preceding decade. Like many Europeans, he had been appalled by the violence, the excesses, and the aggressiveness of revolutionary France. He was no longer the enthusiastic supporter of liberal causes that he had once been. Moreover, George admired the doggedness with which the Tories were pursuing the war against Napoleon. By the end of 1812, it was clear to the Whigs that the prince would retain the Tories in power.

By then it was equally clear that George was not a well man. The illness that afflicted him bore symptoms similar to those exhibited by his father. It is probable that the prince also suffered from porphyria, although not in the acute form that caused George III’s insanity. The prince’s health problems would contribute to his indecisiveness and ineffectiveness as a political leader in the years ahead.

In 1815, following the Battle of Waterloo, Great Britain emerged victorious from the long war with France. The nation that the prince regent viewed in its hour of triumph was considerably different from that of his youth. Rapid commercial and economic growth, coupled with advancing industrialization, was causing much social dislocation and distress. The influence of the French Revolution aroused many Englishmen to favor further democratization of British politics. Discontent was expressed through riots (the Peterloo Massacre ), assassination plots (the Cato Street Conspiracy), and vociferous demands for political reform. During the next fifteen years, George aligned himself with conservative Tories in defense of the status quo. The death in 1817 of Princess Charlotte, whose liberal views were well known, caused the Whigs to despair of ever achieving their political program.

On January 29, 1820, George III died, and his son became king in his own right. The first crisis of George IV’s reign occurred when he attempted to exclude Princess Caroline from enjoying the prerogatives and benefits of being queen. George’s legal maneuverings caused Caroline to return to England from the Continent, where she had been residing since 1814. The populace greeted her arrival with great acclaim, perceiving her as the hapless, innocent victim of George’s infidelities and cruelties. Caroline’s popularity was an accurate gauge of the dislike of ordinary Englishmen for George and the Tory government. The king was outraged by Caroline’s courting of the populace and caused a divorce bill on the grounds of adultery to be introduced in the House of Lords in August of 1820.

Caroline’s extramarital affairs had been known to George and his advisers since the early nineteenth century. In 1806, a special Commission of Enquiry had established that she had probably engaged in several illicit affairs since her marriage to George. To the information gathered by this committee—known as the “Delicate Investigation”—there had been added massive, new evidence of Caroline’s riotous living and immoral life on the Continent after 1814. This new investigating body, the Milan Commission, depicted Caroline as romantically involved with an Italian nobleman, appearing seminude in public on several occasions, and openly boasting of her numerous sexual liaisons. Confronted by overwhelming evidence, the Lords voted in favor of the divorce bill, but only marginally.

The public response, moreover, was intimidating. Mobs, some of them egged on by the Whig opposition, protested against the queen’s conviction. The ministers, prominent Tory politicians, and even George himself were booed and heckled when they appeared in public. The Whigs seemed determined to use this opportunity to bring the ministry down. In the face of potentially violent disturbances, George’s advisers suggested that he quietly withdraw the divorce bill from further consideration by the House of Commons. This he did, but only with great reluctance. George was relieved from further mortifying embarrassment by the queen’s behavior when she died suddenly in 1821. The incident had graphically demonstrated to the Tories the extent of their unpopularity, and, consequently, slow progress toward Tory liberalization began.

Nevertheless, despite the urgent need for change, reform proceeded at a snail’s pace under the Tory administrations of the 1820’s. George proved to be even more conservative than his ministers, opposing reformist ideas and initiatives and espousing a strong royal prerogative. Initially, he resisted the liberalization of British foreign policy under Foreign Secretary George Canning (who served from 1822 to 1827), whereby Great Britain withdrew unqualified support for the suppression of revolutionary movements and subsequently recognized the independence of Latin America from Spain. As George’s esteem and affection for Canning replaced an earlier hatred, the foreign secretary’s ideas became more attractive to him. George’s later acceptance of Canning’s policy demonstrated a serious defect in the king’s use of the royal prerogatives: To a great extent, he was easily swayed by his personal feelings toward individual ministers and politicians.

The king’s resistance to the Tories’ one substantial piece of reformist legislation, the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, was more typical of his stubbornness and reactionary political attitudes. Only after months of obstructive behavior—including threats to abdicate or veto the bill—did he finally relent in the face of a tactful lobbying effort by his most esteemed friends and advisers, led by the duke of Wellington. George’s strong opposition to Catholic emancipation was all the more incredible in the light of the potentially revolutionary situation in Ireland.

In spite of occasional fits of assertiveness, George’s royal style was characterized more often by indecisiveness and deliberate inattention to his duties. Ministers frequently had to hound him for weeks to secure his signature on important documents. As he had been wont to do in his youth, he dissipated his time in heavy drinking and social events. The greater part of his positive energies was devoted to the refurbishing of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace in unsurpassed opulence at great expense to the British public. In his final years, George’s social activities were curtailed by obesity, gout, and arteriosclerosis. These debilitating conditions made him an invalid during the waning months of his life. He died on June 26, 1830, from a ruptured blood vessel in the stomach region.

Significance

George IV was one of the more incompetent and ineffective monarchs of Great Britain. His alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, financial extravagance, and general irresponsibility made him extremely unpopular with most segments of British society, and hampered his abilities to govern the nation in the aggressive style forged by his father, George III. During his regency and reign, the royal prerogatives were further eroded through lack of intelligent and consistent use. In this way, George inadvertently contributed to the strengthening of parliamentary institutions and the concomitant deterioration of royal power in Great Britain.

Bibliography

Cowie, Leonard W. Hanoverian England, 1714-1837. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1967. A brief but comprehensive account of Great Britain under the Hanoverian dynasty.

David, Saul. The Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency. London: Little, Brown, 1998. Comprehensive, balanced biography. David recounts anecdotes about George’s scandalous lifestyle, but also credits George for his patronage of the arts and his crucial role in the multinational campaign against Napoleon.

Gash, Norman. Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 1770-1828. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. Much more than a simple biography, Gash’s work provides a brief introduction to English politics in the era of George IV. Liverpool was prime minister from 1812 to 1827 and was much detested, but he was indispensable to George IV.

Hibbert, Christopher. George IV: Prince of Wales, 1762-1811. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. A fine biography of George. Comprehensive in its scope and based upon extensive research in archival sources. Fair-minded and judicious in its evaluations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. George IV: Regent and King, 1811-1830. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Continues the story begun in the author’s above-cited work.

Leslie, Doris. The Great Corinthian: A Portrait of the Prince Regent. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952. A well-written, colorful narrative of George’s life before 1821. Describes the pageantry and beauty of aristocratic life in Regency England. Distressingly short on that political and character analysis necessary to an understanding of George IV.

Machin, G. I. T. The Catholic Question in English Politics, 1820 to 1830. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1964. Scholarly background to the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829. Places the question of Ireland and Catholic emancipation clearly in the context of politics during the reign of George IV.

Parissien, Steven. George IV: Inspiration of the Regency. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Parissien’s biography is generally critical of George IV, describing his inconstancy, selfishness, and ill-conceived emulation of the French monarchy. Parissien concludes that George was one of the most hated monarchs who “sundered the contract between monarch and nation.”

Richardson, Joanna. George IV: A Portrait. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1966. A short biography of George, attempting to rehabilitate his character by neglecting the political and private sides of his life. Places great stress on George’s role as a patron of scholars, writers, architects, and artists.

Smith, E. A. George IV. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. This biography, one in the Yale English Monarchs series, provides a less critical view of George than many other books. Smith reconsiders George’s accomplishments, crediting the king with significant achievements in politics and for his patronage of the arts.