William IV

King of Great Britain (r. 1830-1837) and Hanover (r. 1830-1837)

• Born: August 21, 1765
• Birthplace: Buckingham House, London, England
• Died: June 20, 1837
• Place of death: Windsor Castle, near London, England

William IV’s reign as king of Great Britain was relatively brief, but he oversaw some of the most fundamental changes in British government of the nineteenth century. The Reform Bill of 1832, which may well have averted a revolution, could not have been passed without his support, and his reign also witnessed the continued increase of the power of the House of Commons and the continued erosion of the power of the Crown.

Early Life

The third son of King George III and his queen, Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Streilitz, Prince William Henry was born in what was then known as Buckingham House (Buckingham Palace after its expansion during the 1820’s) in London. His eldest brother, George, Prince of Wales, was to be educated as heir to the throne; his older brother Frederick, later the duke of York, was slated for an army career. George III decided that William should have a naval career. Accordingly, after being tutored at Kew Palace from 1772, William, accompanied by his tutor, joined the Royal Navy in June, 1779. He was on active service for nine of the next eleven years and served on vessels that cruised to America and the West Indies; his voyages were punctuated by brief visits to Kew or Windsor.

When William was in New York in the last year of the American Revolution, he was the subject of an abortive kidnapping plot. He was on the Continent from 1783 to 1785, primarily in the family court of Hanover. Elevated to the rank of captain in 1786, William was given command of his own ship and posted to the maritime provinces of Canada. Summoned home by the Prince of Wales during their father’s fit of madness in 1788, he returned to England via the West Indies. To his surprise and perhaps to his disappointment, he found that the king had recovered and resumed authority. Some months thereafter, in May, 1789, William was created duke of Clarence.

The duke had few apparent talents and lacked a commanding presence. Even flattering portraits reveal the pear-shaped head that provided an irresistible feature for caricaturists. Moreover, he was often boorish, insensitive, and vulgar and offended the strict king by leading a profligate life, having engaged in a series of affairs. A capable junior officer and captain, he was judged by both the Admiralty and the king to be lacking the abilities necessary for command of a fleet. Denied that promotion, his naval career was effectively ended. For decades, William remained unemployed, subsisting on the parliamentary grant provided him as a royal duke. Given his situation, perhaps it was inevitable that he drift into the filial opposition that characterized royal relations in eighteenth century England and associate himself, briefly, with the social circle that formed around the Prince of Wales.

Life’s Work

In 1790, the duke of Clarence established a liaison with the actor Dorothea Jordan. The relationship lasted some two decades. The couple had ten illegitimate children, all surnamed FitzClarence, and lived with their brood near Hampton Court, the duke having been appointed Ranger of Bushy Park, which gave him the use of that property. Mrs. Jordan continued her acting career, thereby supplementing the duke’s parliamentary grant. Most likely it was boredom as well as mounting debts that impelled Clarence to end their connection and search for a younger and more well-endowed consort who would meet with the approval of the monarch as required by the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.

That quest soon became an affair of state, all the more important after Princess Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s only child, died in 1817. After his overtures had been spurned by several English heirs and foreign princesses, William finally secured the engagement of Adelaide, princess of Saxe-Meiningen. The prospective marriage allowed the duke to negotiate a significantly larger parliamentary grant, and the couple was married in July, 1818. Each of their two children, both girls, died in infancy.

When George III died in 1820, the Prince of Wales, Prince Regent since 1812, succeeded to the throne in his own right as George IV. In 1827, the duke of York died, which made the duke of Clarence heir presumptive. The new prime minister, George Canning, thereupon appointed him Lord High Admiral, an office that had been unfilled for more than a century. The duke launched into naval business with alacrity. He soon overstepped the bounds of the restored but restricted office, however, and was compelled to resign in August, 1828. He had, however, emerged from a lifetime of relative obscurity.

The duke of Clarence succeeded to the throne as William IV in June, 1830, at the age of sixty-four. The unpopularity of his predecessor coupled with William’s breezy informality resulted in his succession being welcomed by the populace. He also had ample opportunity to indulge an idiosyncratic penchant for speechmaking during the early months of his reign. The elections of July, 1830, resulted in no immediate change of government, but the duke of Wellington some months later remained intransigent about parliamentary reform, lost the confidence of the House of Commons, and resigned. William called upon the second Earl Grey, leader of the Whig Party now pledged to reform, to form a government.

In his capacity as a peer since 1789, William had publicly discussed only a few issues. He had unabashedly denounced the evils of adultery; he cited his West Indian experience in supporting the slave trade and slavery; he supported his brother’s divorce from Queen Caroline; and he supported the Wellington government’s bill for Catholic emancipation. Despite little political involvement, he had been imbued with traditional ideas about the English constitution that he thought validated a government comprising kings, lords, and commons; presumably there was an equilibrium or balance among these three estates of the realm. William recognized, however, that the powers of the House of Commons had increased and that the monarch’s powers were not as great as they once had been, but certain functions, he knew, still belonged to the king as part of the royal prerogative. Above all, he retained the increasingly anachronistic view that the ministers were still the king’s ministers in fact as well as in theory.

Although he consented to Grey’s selection of each minister, William reposed his confidence in Lord Grey personally, not in the cabinet collectively. Grey, moreover, was most responsible for reassuring the king about the essentially conservative intentions of the government and in persuading him that the alternative to parliamentary reform was a revolution that would destroy both the monarchy and the aristocracy. Impressing the king with these views, Grey had to counter the overwhelmingly Tory sentiments of Queen Adelaide, the FitzClarences, and the duke of Cumberland, the king’s younger brother. The court’s opposition to reform was all the more shrill given the looting and riots that occurred in the countryside and the agitation of political unions in some of the towns.

The government’s Reform Bill was far more extensive than had been anticipated, but the king’s reservations were overcome by Lord Grey. When the government was reversed on an amendment in the House of Commons, however, it called upon the king to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections. Despite his fear of violence accompanying elections, William agreed, persuading himself that the Lords’ imminent address requesting that he refuse a dissolution constituted an infringement on the royal prerogative. The elections of 1831, virtually a plebiscite on reform, resulted in securing the House of Commons for the Reform Bill. The king became enormously popular, because his name was associated with the reform cause, a development he resented. The Lords, however, rejected the bill on its second reading in October, 1831.

The months that followed witnessed a few concessions to the peers, but none on what ministers considered to constitute the principles of the bill—abolition of rotten boroughs, a uniform franchise in the boroughs, and extension of parliamentary representation to the unrepresented towns. William sought to have the government make some concession on the last point, but to no avail. He could do little more than encourage Grey to negotiate with a few moderate peers, but those negotiations were fruitless. It became increasingly evident even to the most conservative ministers that the Reform Bill could only be passed if the government were armed with the king’s promise to create sufficient new peers to force the bill through the House of Lords.

The king first consented to a token creation and then to sufficient peers to carry the bill, but the prospect of a mass creation of peers—even if preference were given, as he stipulated, to eldest sons of existing peers, collateral heirs, and Scottish and Irish peers—caused him to renege. Consequently, when the government resigned in May, 1832, the king recruited Wellington to form a coalition administration that could produce a bill acceptable to the Lords. Wellington was unable to do so. William, therefore, had to recall Grey and formally submit to his government’s demand for a creation of peers if necessary. It proved to be unnecessary only when William’s pledge became known. The Reform Bill became law in June, 1832, though the king declined a personal appearance in Parliament to give the royal assent.

Other important legislation was promulgated by the Whig governments of the 1830’s, much of it distasteful to the king. Such was the case with the abolition of slavery in 1833, to which he consented but which he still considered objectionable. He was most upset with the ministers’ treatment of the Irish question, which occupied much of Parliament’s time during the remainder of his reign. In particular, he opposed the intended appropriation of Irish church revenues to secular purposes, considering it an erosion of established institutions.

The controversy about the matter resulted in the resignation of four conservative ministers in 1834. William accepted their resignations only on condition that Grey accept them, once again demonstrating his reliance upon his prime minister. He construed the subsequent resignation of Lords Grey and Althorp in July, 1834, on a related Irish matter, to be tantamount to the resignation of the entire cabinet. Once again, he attempted to establish a coalition government of all parties, which he thought was necessary to stem encroachment upon the powers of both the Crown and the House of Lords by the newly reformed House of Commons. Again, none of the leading politicians seriously considered a coalition practical or desirable. William then selected the Whig second Viscount Melbourne as his prime minister.

William’s most dramatic attempt to restore the Crown’s power was his dismissal of the Whig government in November, 1834, ostensibly because Lord Althorp had to leave the Commons for the Lords to succeed his father. It proved to be the last time that a king dismissed a ministry that had the support of a majority of the House of Commons. Although the constitutionality of the king’s action was not seriously questioned at the time, it was ineffective politically. The House of Commons refused to support the succeeding Tory government. When Grey declined a plea that he abandon retirement and lead a coalition, the king was forced to submit again to Melbourne and the Whigs in April, 1835. His suggestion that Melbourne submit the matter of appropriation of Irish church revenues to a board of judges as a judicial question was rejected out of hand. Melbourne would not formally accept the king’s right to exclude specific politicians from his cabinet.

William continued to feel besieged during the last two years of his reign. He was dismayed by some legislation, such as the Municipal Corporations Bill of 1835, but was relieved that the government was unable to enact the legislation for diverting surplus Irish church revenues to secular purposes. He died at Windsor Castle on June 20, 1837, and was succeeded by his niece, Victoria.

Significance

William IV’s brief reign remains of considerable importance in English constitutional history. Although the power of the Crown had been declining steadily for decades, during the early nineteenth century the king to some extent still ruled as well as reigned. Far more than a figurehead, the monarch had real power. In William IV’s reign, that was most evident in the need to have the king’s support to pass the Reform Bill. William’s views on foreign affairs also had to be considered, especially since he was the last king of England who was also king of Hanover. The Reform Bill that required the king’s support to pass, however, further eroded the Crown’s power. It gave even greater power to the electorate, now augmented in numbers, and thereby reinforced the House of Commons as the dominant part of government as defined by the English constitution.

William IV’s old-fashioned views about a balance of power between King, Lords, and Commons were no longer appropriate. He was compelled in 1835 to recall the Whigs after dismissing them because the cabinet was far more responsible to the House of Commons than to the king. The cabinet may have remained the king’s ministers in theory, but they were no longer the king’s ministers in fact. William IV had also expressed concern about the erosion of the House of Lords’ power and the conflict between the two houses of Parliament. That conflict would continue throughout the nineteenth century, until the power of the Lords was drastically reduced by the Parliament Act of 1911.

Bibliography

Brock, Michael. The Great Reform Act. London: Hutchinson, 1973. Now the standard account of the struggle for the Reform Bill. William’s dependence on Grey is emphasized.

Butler, J. R. M. The Passing of the Great Reform Bill. London: Frank Cass, 1964. A reprint of the 1914 edition, this book is an old but still valuable account in which the king is somewhat more at center stage than in Brock (above).

Fulford, Roger. From Hanover to Windsor. London: Batsford, 1960. The first chapter of this volume on the monarchy contains an elegant essay on William IV, who is favorably evaluated.

Gash, Norman. Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1852. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1965. A judicious interpretation of the constitution and political parties by a distinguished scholar. The first chapter discusses the decline of the Crown’s power during William IV’s reign.

Kriegel, Abraham D., ed. The Holland House Diaries, 1831-1840. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. The introductory essay discusses the legislation of the Whig governments of the 1830’s, the functions of the cabinet, and its relations with the king.

Pocock, Tom. Sailor King: The Life of King William IV. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991. Biography of William, describing his life in the Royal Navy as well as his subsequent monarchy. In Pocock’s opinion, William saw himself as a naval officer who happened to become king—not a king who used to be a naval officer.

Somerset, Anne. The Life and Times of William IV. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980. A popular biography, recommended mainly for the lavish reproductions of contemporary paintings and political cartoons.

Thompson, Grace E. The Patriot King: The Life of William IV. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1932. An older, well-written, popular biography, out of date in its interpretation of politics but good in its portrait of William.

Tomalin, Claire. Mrs. Jordan’s Profession: The Actress and the Prince. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Biography of actor Dorothea Jordan, chronicling her twenty-year relationship as William’s surrogate spouse and the mother of the couple’s ten children.

Ziegler, Philip. King William IV. London: Collins, 1971. The best biography. Ziegler goes a bit too far in claiming that William was England’s first constitutional monarch.