BRISTOL TIMES
REX OF REGRETS
EIGHT-PAGE PULLOUT INSIDE
King George IV was crowned 200 years ago this week. As Prince Regent, he had made himself extremely unpopular, with a scandalous private life which now threatened massive civi unrest and perhaps even the overthrow of the monarchy itself. Eugene Byrne looks back at the events around the coronation in both London and Bristol
KING George III died in January of 1820 and his son was proclaimed King George IV. If you know your history, you’ll know that the new king had been Prince Regent for some years before this; he was king in all but name because his father suffered from severe mental illness, and in later life was deaf, blind and suffering from dementia.
George III’s reign had been a long one – 60 years – and for most of that time he had been popular with his subjects. His family life was seemingly beyond reproach and his interest in agriculture – he was nicknamed “Farmer George” - seemed to most to indicate a plainness and honesty.
This was a huge contrast with the life of the Prince of Wales. The man who now became King George IV was notorious for his gluttony, womanising and his free-spending, not to mention his vanity. While many point to his taste in art, architecture and furnishings – the famous “Regency style” – most people at the time just saw a fat, self-indulgent sybarite who squandered money he had done nothing to earn.
The new king’s coronation, which did not take place until over a year later, would take the controversy to a whole new and farcical level which threatened to bring down the monarchy.
When George III died, Bristol’s city fathers went through the usual motions of loyalty to the new monarch, though there were now very few Bristolians who had any memory of the previous king’s death.
The members of the Corporation assembled at the Council House in black mourning robes, but after the new king was ceremonially proclaimed at the High Cross they went back to the Council House and put on their usual scarlet robes.
The Mayor (William Fripp Jr.) and the sheriffs then took their places in a carriage pulled by 24 men, which then went to various points around the city where the proclamation was read out.
To mark this special occasion, a hogshead of wine (66 gallons, 300 litres) was distributed to the people at three locations – St Peter’s Pump, St Thomas’s Conduit and the Quay pipe. Four hogsheads of porter were distributed at other places.
Meanwhile, at the Commercial Rooms - where the city’s business and political elite met - the managing committee spent almost £68 on wine “drunk on the night of his majesty’s accession”.
This was a huge sum; the equivalent of two years’ wages for a working man, and there must have been some very sore heads the morning after.
This wasn’t the city fathers’ only headache. The accession of the new king had brought his private life crashing into the public sphere. Again.
Prince George’s extravagant habits started early, and by 1795 he had debts of over £600,000; think of this as several tens of millions today. His father refused to give him any more money unless he married his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick.
It was a marriage made in hell. On first meeting her he took an instant dislike to her, telling an aide he felt unwell and needed a glass of brandy. On his wedding day, he drank copious amounts of Maraschino and was only semi-conscious through the ceremony.
Caroline later claimed he tried to make her smoke a pipe on their wedding night, then passed out unconscious in the fireplace.
For his part, he said he considered her unhygienic and that “it required no small effort to …overcome the disgust of her person.”
He also suspected that she was not a virgin. But then, he certainly wasn’t either. He had already had several mistresses and would have plenty more, including the Bristol-born actress Mary Robinson.
When he married Caroline, George was already married to his mistress Maria Fitzherbert, though technically it was invalid because George’s father had not consented to it. The ceremony had been performed by a clergyman who was at the time in debtor’s prison; the astronomical £500 he was paid to solemnise the marriage was enough to get him released.
Though Caroline bore a daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales, the couple were soon living apart. Her private life was equally scandalous, taking in several lovers (including, allegedly, the Bristol-born portrait artist Sir Thomas Lawrence, who would devote a considerable part of his career to painting flattering pictures of George). Despite this, Caroline was popular, if only because of the Prince’s unpopularity.
Finally, in 1814, she accepted a secret deal: a payment of £35,000 a year to leave the country. She went travelling through Europe, living more or less openly with her lover, Bartolomeo Pergami.
On the death of George III she returned to claim her rights, as she saw it, as queen. In England she found herself the figurehead of a growing and angry radical political movement demanding the reform of the monarchy, a movement which had been directly created by the Prince’s extravagance and hypocrisy, but also by increasingly delusional behaviour; he claimed to have led the charge at the Battle of Salamanca, or to have been at the Battle of Waterloo.
The new King George IV was desperate for a divorce, and that Caroline should never be queen. The problem was that under the law of the time, divorce was only possible if one party or the other had committed adultery. In this case, both parties had, but neither was about to admit it.
The solution, as George’s political supporters saw it, was to pass an Act of Parliament which would dissolve the marriage and deprive her of the title of Queen.
The Pains and Penalties Bill of 1820 was first debated in the Lords. The proceedings turned into what was effectively a public trial of Caroline, and exposed her private life in excruciating detail.
But public support for her remained solid, and there were frequent demonstrations in her favour - not to mention petitions. The Bill narrowly passed the Lords, but was withdrawn before it went to the Commons, where it would almost certainly have failed.
This was no mere royal soap opera, but the latest chapter in serious political unrest brought about by the industrial revolution and the economic dislocations at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
On November 11, 1820, a large crowd had gathered in Corn Street for the arrival of the mail coach from London. No trains or telegraphs yet; this was how people got the latest news from
the capital.
The first passengers got out, and as soon as the crowd could see they were smiling and waving their hats, it was all the information they needed. There were cheers and yells of “God save the Queen!”
The city magistrates were now nervous, issuing a notice urging people to “abstain from … a measure which might disturb the peace of the city.”
An “illumination” in the Queen’s support was called for November 13 – that is, people were encouraged to show their backing for her cause by putting a light in their windows. A printer was later up before the magistrates for printing a handbill advertising the event, while a pub landlord was deprived of his licence for putting an unflattering cartoon of the new King in his window in front of his candle.
The editor of the Bristol Journal noted that the lights were most prominently displayed in working class districts and that people were spending their welfare money inappropriately: “The splendour of the dwellings of the out-door paupers,” he wrote, “announced that the whole week’s allowance from the workhouse had been expended in honour of Queen Caroline.”
Tory supporters, on the other hand, displayed their loyalty to the new king by keeping their houses in darkness. An address congratulating the Queen on the defeat of her persecutor was adopted at a public meeting at the Guildhall, while a meeting of the king’s supporters approved a motion backing the monarch and expressing horror at the “treason and blasphemy” of the Queen’s party.
Despite the high feelings on both sides, there was no serious disorder over the winter and the following spring. Meanwhile, Napoleon died in his remote exile on the island of Saint Helena. A courtier brought the news to the king with the words, “Your greatest enemy is dead sir!”
To which he replied, “By God! Is she?”
The Coronation took place on July 19, 1821, a full year and a half after the death of George III. The main reason for the delay had been the new king’s attempts to be rid of his wife.
The ceremony at Westminster Abbey was planned meticulously and, in keeping with the king’s tastes, would be one of the most elaborate (and expensive) ever held. The Queen was not invited, but she turned up anyway - as did a mob of her supporters. She made several attempts to enter the Abbey by various entrances but was blocked by soldiers and officials.
Instead of using young aristocrats as page boys, the king had hired prize-fighters instead.
The most spectacular aspect of Bristol’s celebrations was the procession to the Cathedral. It was headed by the Bellman, followed by pupils of the City School (QEH), local law officers and the Mayor and Corporation members in their red robes. Then the local clergy as well as the girls of Red Maids, and the local yeomanry on horseback. Local trades were represented – miners with pickaxes, the local carriagemakers (a man with a model carriage on his head), printers and a printing press, a model frigate on wheels pulled by men in blue jackets presumably on behalf of the local shipbuilders.
At a special service at the Cathedral, the only person present who had been there at the service for the coronation of George III 60 years previously was the Dowager Lady Smyth.
Afterwards, the procession returned to the Council House on Corn Street. In the afternoon there was a dinner at the Assembly Rooms, the Mayor presiding, after which the company were called upon to drink 35 toasts!
At night the Corporation gave a ball, while public buildings and some private houses were illuminated – candles in the windows, once more – though one Bristolian dyed his candles black on account of “the unmerited exclusion of my queen” from the coronation.
While all this might sound as if Bristol had pulled out all the stops to celebrate, it was actually a very modest show compared with coronation celebrations here before and since. For one thing, there were no ox-roasts in public places, there were no fountains running with free wine or beer for the populace. It wasn’t just that George IV was unpopular; it was because the city’s rulers feared that free booze might lead to riots.
In any event, the king did not command the loyalty of the all of the local elite. On the Sunday after the coronation, one of the Cathedral canons took two verses from the Book of Daniel as the subject of his sermon:
Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.
Prebendary Randolph, we’re told, pronounced the words “wives” and “concubines” with particular emphasis.
Nobody in the congregation would have missed the point the canon was making. All would have known the Old Testament story of the great feast the Babylonian king hosted, and of the mysterious writing which appeared on the wall in the middle of the festivities, which none could translate until his servant Daniel was called in to tell him that it said: “Weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
A few weeks later, Caroline, the uncrowned queen, was dead. Officially the cause was an intestinal obstruction, which might well have been cancer. At the time, though, it was widely rumoured that she had been murdered.
The following year, the new turnpike road in Bedminster was officially opened. As the labourers who had been working on it had been given a big boozy feast on coronation day, it was decided to call it Coronation Road.
George IV died in June 1830, aged 67, his excessive eating and drinking having taken their toll on him. In his later years he suffered from severe gout and was so obese that the smallest exertion left him breathless. This and other pains left him so addicted to laudanum (opium in brandy) that he was barely sensate.
An autopsy revealed he had died from the rupture of a blood vessel in his stomach. A tumour the size of a cricket ball was found attached to his bladder; his heart was enlarged and surrounded by a large fat deposit.
“There was never an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased King. What heart has heaved one sob of unmercenary sorrow?” said his obituary in The Times.
One of his own aides wrote privately: “A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist ... There have been good and wise kings but not many of them ... and this I believe to be one of the worst.”
Despite his numerous mistresses and casual sexual liaisons, he had not left any legitimate heirs – Princess Charlotte had died in childbirth in 1817. He was succeeded by his brother who became King William IV.
The coronation of William on September 8, 1831 was celebrated with great enthusiasm as the new king was down-to-earth, informal and, above all, thrifty.
The underlying social problems which saw millions of Britons living in near-poverty, though, had not gone away. The burning political issue - the exclusion of most Britons from the vote - was reaching a climax. Just a few weeks later, the Queen Square riots would break out.