The Prince Regent and His Circle:
In their own words
The childhood of Prince George
George was born on 12 August 1762, the first son of George III and Queen Charlotte. He was made prince of Wales five days later.
Princes must serve as examples to others.
– George III to his son George, Prince of Wales.
My dear son … My advice to you will be short and sincere ... Fear god, abhor all vice, disdain all flattery, do justice unto everybody – Vanity is the root of all vice and a sure proof of ignorance. For what is man to man? We are all equal before God … Above all, I recommend to you the highest love, affection and duty towards the King, the best, the most deserving of all friends you can possibly find …
– Queen Charlotte to her son in 1770, when Prince George was eight years old.
Soup, neither strong nor heavy. Plain meat without fat ... Clear gravy and Greens. And for Dessert, a fruit of tart without crust.
– Instructions to the prince of Wales's governor Lord Holdernesse.
Prince George as a young man
My dear son, my inclination is to grant you all the rational amusement I can, and keep you out of what is improper … Whenever you are desirous of dancing, I shall very readily forward it – but I shall not permit going to Balls and Assemblies at private houses … (When you do not frequent Plays or Operas, I shall endeavour to make evenings pass agreeably – playing at cards or conversing in the music room – the choice shall always be yours.)
– Letter from George III to the prince, December 1780. It contains the king's 'plan of the Establishment' – expenses, allowances, rules of conduct and so on – for the prince of Wales now that he has turned 18 and has his own household.
I wish to live with you as a friend but by your behaviour you must deserve it ... If I did not state these things, I should not fulfil my duty either to my God or my country.
– Letter from the king to the prince, May 1781.
Tho' I respect him & use him with all possible duty, deference, & respect, I think his behaviour is so excessively unkind yt. there are moments when I can hardly ever put up with it. Sometimes not speaking to me when he sees me for three weeks together, & hardly ever at court, speaking to people on each side of me & then missing me, & then if he does honour me with a word, 'tis either merely 'Tis very hot or very cold'. You yourself must feel in any situation how unpleasant it must be, but particularly so in mine, & then sometimes when I go to his house never taking any notice of me at all, as if I was not there.
– Prince George to his brother Frederick, duke of York, 6 July 1784.
… The unkind behaviour of both of their majesties but in particular of the queen is such that it is hardly bearable. She and I, under the protestations of the greatest friendship, had a long conversation together. She accused me of various high crimes and misdemeanours and which I answered and in the vulgar English phrase gave her as good as she brought.
– Prince George to his brother Frederick, October 1781.
Rather tall … [and] striking … [but] inclined to be too fat and looks too much like a woman in men's clothes … he is good-natur'd and rather extravagant ...
– Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, describing the 20-year-old prince.
[The prince will become either] the most polished gentleman or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe. Possibly an admixture of both.
– Dr Richard Hurd, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, one of George's praeceptors (teachers).
I must … form a Ministry from among men who I know I cannot trust … and therefore who will not accept office without making me a kind of slave. This undoubtedly is a cruel dilemma and leaves me but one step … the resigning of my crown, my dear son, to you, quitting this my native country for ever and returning to the dominions of my forefathers. Your difficulties will not be the same. You have never been in a situation to form any political system, therefore are open to adopt what the times may make necessary …
– Letter from the king to the prince, March 1783
Indiscretions I may have been guilty of but of none with a criminal intent.
– Letter from the prince to Colonel Hotham, his personal treasurer, June 1783
I do hope you won't be such a fool as not to know that your interests are inseparable from mine.
– Letter from the king to the prince, 27 August 1784.
The prince and his debts
Would your lordship, with your ideas of propriety, have the Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the crown of Great Britain, dismiss his servants, sell his horses, part with every magnificence annexed to his situation in life? A moment's reflection will, I am sure, convince you of the absurdity as well as the impossibility of adopting so ridiculous as well as indecent a measure. It would be improper for me to live with a less degree of magnificence than I hitherto have done.
– Letter from the prince to Lord Southampton, George III's groom of the stole, September 1784.
It was my earnest wish to have stated to your Royal Highness the exact state of every part of your debts with precision, but I soon found that was impossible: every day brought on some charge in every department which I could neither account for nor control. All I could do, therefore, after much delay, has been to collect what can only be called an estimate of your Royal Highness's present debts … such fresh expense arises from one hour to another, from quarters in which it is so little to be expected, that it is utterly impossible for me to give more than a random guess for a week forward … It is with equal grief and vexation that I now see your Royal Highness – in manners of expense, I mean – totally in the hands and at the mercy of your builder, your upholsterer, your jeweller and your tailor. I say totally, because these people act from your Royal Highness's pretended commands, and from their charges, there is no appeal. They have undertaken, and are carrying works through, to an enormous amount, without a single care or enquiry from whence money was to arise for their discharge; neither my advice, my expostulations, nor my representation of there being no fund whatever for this purpose, has been regarded.
Your Royal Highness knows the whole of your income; £12,500 each quarter is what you receive from Government. That, and the precarious supply your Duchy of Cornwall can afford you half yearly, is all you have to answer the demands of your household for salaries and wages, your table and living, your stables of each kind, with all their appurtenances; your Privy Purse, your buildings of every sort, your furniture for those buildings; all your tradesmen, and all allowances and acts of charity and beneficence that your very elevated situation calls upon you to make.
How inadequate these two streams are to furnish so many torrents of expense, your Royal Highness cannot but be as good a judge as myself.
– Letter to the prince from Colonel Hotham, 27 October 1784. Note: £12,500 in 1784 is the equivalent of £886,654.14 today.
I confess the sum is large but what adds more to my distress is that the longer it continues unpaid the more it will continue to augment. I therefore have nothing to do but to throw myself upon Your Majesty's benevolence, hoping for your gracious assistance, which if I am so unfortunate as not to meet with will throw me into a situation below that of the lowest individual in the country.
– Letter from the prince to the king, accompanying the first statement of his debts, June 1786.
… In order to secure the payment of the said sum of £25,000 … his said Royal Highness hath delivered to the said William Morland and Thomas Hammersley … a casket covered with red morocco leather containing a diamond epaulette, a diamond star, a diamond George, a diamond garter and sundry diamond trinkets and ornaments belonging to his Royal Highness …
– Letter from the prince to W Morland and T Hammersley, 10 May 1791. Note: £25,000 in 1791 is equivalent to £1,781,344.41 today.
The first regency crisis
George III suffered a particularly violent bout of 'madness' in November 1788. The plots and political manoeuvring of the first 'regency crisis' lasted until February of the following year, by which time the prince seemed on the brink of becoming regent. Then, quite unexpectedly the king recovered. George was left completely exposed, looking like a cynical, heartless figure who had exalted in his father's distress and illness and tried to use this terrible national crisis to get himself into a position of power so that he could pay off his debts.
And yet there is in the kingdom an heir apparent of full age and capacity to exercise and restore the royal power, to exercise the royal authority …
– Charles James Fox's declaration in Parliament of the prince of Wales's hereditary right to the regency, 16 December 1788.
I tremble at the thought of doing anything which may in the smallest degree endanger the agitating of His Majesty's mind … There is no one, both in heart and mind, who can be truly or more sincerely devoted and attached to his sacred person then myself …
– Letter from the prince to the king, 9 March 1789.
Your Majesty, the situation has been full of difficulty and embarrassment, and now attempts are being made to misrepresent my conduct.
– Memorial from the prince (and the royal family) to the king, June 1789.
While we may possibly be found to have err'd in judgement, to have acted on mistaken principles, I am confident that we shall not be found to have been deficient in that duteous affection to Your Majesty which nothing can or shall ever remove.
– Letter from the prince to the king, 14 August 1789.
The prince and war
The very existence of every prince at this moment is concern'd and depends on the total annihilation of this banditti who are a disgrace to the human species by the atrocities which they have been guilty of …
– Letter from the prince to his brother Frederick, duke of York, 14 April 1793, commenting on the revolutionaries in France.
Pronounce, Sir, whether it would be fitting that your son should appear as an useless adjunct to the pageantry of the Army, standing forbidden to contribute to its energy by that example which he might be able to exhibit …
Recall, I beg you, Edward III and his son at Crécy. There, heroic Edward gave to the unexperienced Prince of Wales the command of the vanguard at Crécy, and the services of the son, not on the day alone but through life, repaid the confidence of the father.
I have the good fortune to possess so many brothers that the stake of my life can be of little political importance. I beg Your Majesty to permit me to display the best energies of my character, to shed the last drop of my blood in support of Your Majesty's person, crown and dignity …
– Letter from the prince to the king, 1795
My head is almost turned … you know with what acute feelings your son is in and therefore will justify to yourself these feelings which I fear I almost express in a tone of insanity. The king has already given me life but now he has done more, for he has not only given me life but the enjoyment of life …
I am not equal to meeting any of you this evening, overpowered with the shocking and horrid events of France [the execution of Louis XVI] and with a species of sentiment towards my father which surpasses all description … I could not help yielding to the cowardice of the nervous system which has made me confine myself at home this evening …
– Letter from the prince to Queen Charlotte, January 1793, on his appointment as colonel of the 10th Light Dragoons.
… My character with the nation, my honour, my future fame and prospects in life are now all at stake. I beg Your Majesty to afford me the means of their preservation … what I humbly but most earnestly solicit is the certainty of active service …
… I remain what I have ever been, a mere colonel of Dragoons, a situation wholly below the dignity which my birth and station give me …
… I am to a certain degree under Prince William's command here … only think of his being a major-general … and the Prince of Wales only a simple colonel under the command of such a dull stupid boy … my birth, rank, consequence, education, age and time of life is all to go for nothing. Would to God the king could ever be made to feel for me as I do and have at times for him.
– Extracts from letters from the prince, indicating his impatience at his lack of active service and, more importantly, lack of further promotion. Letters 1347, 1353, 1387, The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales 1770-1812.
The prince and his women
I have done extravagant things and I'm not ashamed of it; but I've always had my principles, and my principles have always been the same – gallant to every woman, but faithful to one!
– Prince George, as reported by Princess Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to Britain.
He cried by the hour … he testified to the sincerity and violence of his passion and his despair by the most extravagant expressions and actions, rolling on the floor, striking his forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics and swearing that he would abandon the country, forego the crown, sell his jewels and plate and scrape together a competence to fly with the object of his affections to America.
– Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party, commenting on the prince's histrionic technique for wooing the Catholic widow Maria Fitzherbert, c 1785. They were secretly married on 21 December 1785, but the marriage was void according to the Royal Marriage Act.
As to marrying myself, I had no such immediate intention or inclination, that I had wish'd some years to have gone abroad in order to have seen whether I could have met with a woman who would have been likely to have suited me … as to us princes the choice of wife was indeed a lottery and one from the wheel of which I did not, at least at present, intend to draw a ticket. There were very few prizes compared to the number of blanks.
– Letter from the prince to his brother Frederick, duke of York, 24 July 1791, in which he reports a conversation with the king.
Pretty face – not expressive of softness – figure not graceful – tolerable teeth but going – fair hair and light eyebrows, good bust … Vastly happy with her future expectations … talks incessantly. No fixed character, a light and flighty mind, but meaning well and well disposed – my eternal theme to her: to think before she speaks, to recollect herself. Flippant, rattling and coarse. Such giddy manners cannot please the prince.
– Assessment of Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 by the prince's friend and confidant James Harris, earl of Malmesbury, in his Diaries and Correspondence.
I am determined never to be jealous. I know the prince is 'lively' and I am prepared on this point. I could be a slave to the man I loved, but to him I did not love, impossible!
… My father had a mistress, she was a very, very stupid woman, like all mistresses, I am sure … My mother was a beautiful creature, and why my father should choose to favour another I cannot say – but then men are stupid too …
– Typical table talk of Caroline of Brunswick, as recorded by Malmesbury.
I was not the first. Not only was there no appearance of blood on that first night, but her manners were not those of a novice. 'Ah mon dieu, qu'il est gros! ' she said – taking those liberties natural on these occasions. Now then – how should she know this without a previous means of comparison?
Finding that I had suspicions of her not being new, the next night she mixed up some tooth power and water, coloured her shift with it and in showing these to me at the same time showed such marks of filth both in the fore and hind part that she turned my stomach and from that moment I vowed never to touch her again.
– The prince's recollections of his first nights with Caroline following their marriage on 8 April 1795, reported by Malmesbury in an extract from the latter's Diaries and Correspondence that has only recently been published
Judge what it was to have a drunken husband on one's wedding day and one who passed the greatest part of his bridal night under the grate, where he fell and where I left him.
– Caroline, as reported by Lady Charlotte Campbell, daughter of the duke of Argyll, in her Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting.
[Maria Fitzherbert] the wife of my heart & soul etc etc … I wish to be buried with her picture round my neck, and so on … from my beloved parents, I ask forgiveness for any faults I may have ignorantly or unguardedly been guilty of … she who is called the Princess of Wales, the mother of my daughter, should in no way be concerned in the education or care of the child, or have possession of her person … to my daughter I leave my jewels, which are mine having been bought with my own money – and to her who is called the princess of Wales I leave one shilling …
– Prince George's 'will', written on 9 January 1796, two days after the birth of his daughter Charlotte.
Elderly dames seem to be his taste.
– Lady Stafford, 29 June 1796, The Letters of Lady Stafford, 1774-1837.
The princess's expenses should be so governed by the prince that not a candle should be lighted, not a dish of tea drunk without his approbation …
– Lady Jersey, the prince's mistress whom he had appointed as Caroline's chief lady-in-waiting.
We have unfortunately been obliged to acknowledge to each other that we cannot find happiness in our union. Circumstances of character and education, which it is needless to discuss now, render that impossible. It then only remains that we should make the situation as little uncomfortable to each other as its nature will allow …
Let me hope this painful contest will now be closed. If you wish for more of my company it must strike you that the natural mode of obtaining it is to make my own house not obnoxious to me, and you will judge whether a captious tone towards me, or indirect managements against my tranquillity are well calculated to make me feel at ease in your society …
Our inclinations are not in our power nor should either of us be held answerable to the other because nature has not made us suitable to each other … I shall not propose a connection of a more particular nature [ie sexual intercourse].
– Extracts from various letters from the prince to Caroline.
Save me, save me, on my knees I conjure you … If you wish my life you shall have it … nothing but honour in a world in which I have experienced nothing but misery and deceit in return for the finest feelings of the honestest heart … The wretched experiences of the last five years have made life only desirable in one shape to me, and that is in you. I am wrapp'd up in you entirely; after 17 years' attachment nothing can alter me, shake me or change me. Alike yours in life or in death. The crisis is come … you shall and will fix my doom. Etc etc.
– Letter from the prince to Maria Fitzherbert, 11-12 June 1799, after he heard false rumours of her death in Brighton.
There is nothing she [Caroline] is not capable of … the blackening of my reputation and by it striking at that of most of the royal family … not only my humiliation but my total destruction is aimed at … this worthless wretch will prove the ruin of [the king], of you, of me, of every one of us. The king must be resolute and firm, or everything is at an end. Let him recall to his mind the want of firmness of Louis 16 … never propose to me to humiliate myself before the vilest wretch this world was ever curs'd with, who I cannot feel more disgust from her personal nastiness than I do from her entire want of all principle. She is a very monster of iniquity …
– The prince to Queen Charlotte.
I am so worn down by distress that nothing but the strongest sense of religion could make me resist the too-seducing and too-pleasing prospect of ridding my family and myself at once of an existence burdensome to myself which has met with nothing but treachery and ingratitude since I was first launched into the world …
– The prince.
My fate is so very a hard one and the continual provocation and insult I am exposed to from the most unprincipled and unfeeling person of her sex and whom still will not let me alone, drives me almost out of my senses; there is no end to her wickedness, her falsity and her designs … Even those who I love the most and who I know love me the most are made, either by trick or by long-aimed and well-managed design, the instruments of planting the dagger still deeper in my heart …
– The prince to the countess of Elgin, governess to Princess Charlotte, June 1799.
You seem to look on your disunion with the princess as merely of a private nature, and totally put out of sight that, as heir apparent, your marriage is a public act. A separation on a mere disagreement of temper is repugnant to all the laws that govern us …
– Letter from the king to the prince.
He [the prince] has married a very foolish and disagreeable person, but he should have made the best of a bad bargain as our father has done. He married a thoroughly disagreeable woman but he has not behaved ill to her.
– The prince's second-oldest brother William, duke of Clarence, later William IV.
The prince as prince regent
By 1810, things were looking rather bleak for Prince George. He was getting on in years, and his father was actually at the apogee of his popularity, hailed as the father of the nation. Meanwhile the prince was constantly involved in unseemly battles with his wife.
At the end of the year, however, things started to change. George III appeared this time to be genuinely mad, and it was soon clear that he was not going to get better. On 5 February 1811, the prince was finally accorded full regency powers, more than 20 years after he first expected to receive them.
Though whom a cherished People's hearts enthrone,
Great Prince accept my homage in this lay,
Thou whom the arts their chosen Patron owns,
And Science hails Maeceanas of our Day.
Where'er thy graceful form appears,
Each heart is led in chains,
No longer flow Affliction's tears,
But love triumphant reigns.
Adonis! In thy shape and face,
A liberal heart and Princely grace
In thee are seen combined …
Poem in the Morning Post, a pro-government paper, c 1812, in which the prince is praised to the skies as a paragon of learning and virtue, and damn good-looking to boot.
… An Adonis of 50 … a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demi-reps, a man without a single claim to the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity …
– A reply to the Morning Post poem by John Hunt, editor of the Examiner, a small circulation literary/political magazine with strong links to the Romantic poets. This led to John Hunt and his brother Leigh being sued by the king for libel.
The sentence of the court upon you, therefore, is that you severally pay to the king a fine of £500 each; that you be severally imprisoned for the space of two years; you, John Hunt, in the prison in Coldbath-fields, and you, Leigh Hunt, in the New Jail for the county of Surrey in Horsemonger-lane; that at the expiration of that time, you each of you give security in £500 and two sufficient sureties in £250 for your good behaviour during five years, and that you be further severally imprisoned until such fine be paid, and such security given.
– Sentence following the libel trial in December 1812 that found John and Leigh Hunt guilty of libel on the king.
Hush! GREAT BABE! Lie still & slumber,
Troops of lancers guard thy bed
Chinese gimcracks, without number,
Nicely dangle o'er head …
Whether viewed in robes of state or
Glitt'ring in a fancy dress
Wisdom cannot make you greater
Folly cannot make you less …
Thus you'll pass your time securely,
And your baubles all retain.
I shall aspirate demurely
Heavens! What a GLORIOUS Reign!
Hold the Press in close submission
Keep the radicals in awe
Call Reform the worst sClifford Singer at Edition
Yet observe the FORMS of law!
– From the satirical print The Cradle Hymn by George Cruikshank, 1820.
The prince becomes king
George III died at Windsor on 29 January 1820 and the prince of Wales – latterly, prince regent – finally became King George IV at the age of 57.
The king is a blockhead, and nobody much minds what he says any more. He likes to talk grandly to make people imagine that his prime minister is a sort of maître d'hôtel which he might dismiss any moment that it happened to suit him – but this is mere meaningless bravado. No men with the feelings of gentlemen could go on being talked of by the king as they were …
– The duke of Wellington, prime minister from 1828, reported in The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot 1820-1832. Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of a Tory MP, was Wellington's mistress.
We have an abominable Constitution. I would rather be a shoeblack than a member of that odious Parliament. But if I were a private person I should enter it solely with the aim of telling the truth. None of my ministers tell it …
– George IV, reported by Princess Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to Britain.
Wellington: If you do not like your ministers and what they are proposing, you had much better turn them out at once and be done with it … Sir.
George IV: Indeed, perhaps I shall. I can do it – why should I not do it?
Wellington: Your Majesty – there are many things which you can do but you ought not to do.
– Reported by Princess Dorothea Lieven. 'The king,' she added, 'sat grinding his teeth and then went on to some gossiping story about Lady Jersey and Madame Lieven.'
Not an idea in her head; not a word to say for herself; nothing but a hand to accept pearls and diamonds with and an enormous balcony to wear them on … [She only stays with the king because of] his diamonds, pearls, handsome furniture and good dinners … during which he gazed at her with an expression in which somnolence battled against love.
– Princess Dorothea Lieven, on Lady Conyngham, the king's last mistress.
The trial of Princess Caroline
Following her separation from the then prince of Wales, Caroline had lived for years in Italy with the improbably bewhiskered 'Baron' Pergami. She had actually been offered a bounty never to return to England, but had refused it.
As soon as the prince succeeded to the throne on the death of George III, she set sail for England with the intention of taking what she saw as her rightful place as queen. The king's reaction was to arrange, in July 1820, for her to be charged in Parliament under a 'bill of pains and penalties', accusing her of 'licentious behaviour' and proposing to dissolve their marriage.
However, popular support for Caroline made the government withdraw the bill on 10 November, and so the prince was unable to divorce her.
[I am determined] to extricate myself from the cruellest as well as the most unjust predicament that ever even the lowest individual, much more a prince, was ever placed in, by unshackling myself from a woman [Caroline] who has for the last three and twenty years been the bane and curse of my existence.
– George IV
Seventh witness: Pietro Cuchi
– (Agent at the great Inn in Trieste – describes layout of rooms, etc during a six-day stay at Trieste.)
Did you at any time see Pergami come out of the princess's room?
I have seen him come out, at about eight or half past eight in the morning.
How many times during the six days the princess was at Trieste?
Three or four times.
What was he wearing when you saw him?
He had drawers, sometimes stockings, or pantaloons; but this I cannot precisely say for I was looking out of the keyhole of my room.
Why were you looking through the keyhole in that manner at that time?
I was with my breakfast service, to give it when it was asked for …
How many beds were there in the princess's bedroom?
Two.
Did you make any observation on the beds in the bedroom of the princess, whether they had both been slept in or only one?
They were both tumbled.
How did the bed in Pergami's bedroom appear?
It was never slept in.
How many chamber pots were there in the bedroom of the princess?
Two.
Did you observe whether or not they had both been made use of?
There was a good deal in each.
Eighth witness: Meidge Barbara Kress
– (German, worked at the Post Inn, Carlsruhe: she described the bedrooms of PoW and Pergami, next to each other.)
Where did you see Pergami's arm?
Around the neck of the princess, and, when I entered, the princess let the arm fall.
What did the princess then do?
She had jumped up and was alarmed at the moment.
Did she jump upon your coming into the room and discovering them in that situation?
Yes, she had then jumped up.
Ninth day: Saturday 26 August
(The evidence of Meidge Kress contd. Now with two interpreters.)
In the making up of the bed, did you observe anything upon the sheets, or any part of the bed?
Mr Kersten: She says, 'When once I made the bed I saw that the sheets were …' and now she says 'wiiste' by which she may mean 'in disorder'.
What do you mean by them being 'wiiste'?
Goltermann: She is rather at a loss to explain it.
Kersten: She says, 'It had stains.'
Goltermann: She was at first at a loss to express it, but afterwards she said, 'It had stains.'
What sorts of stains?
(Through Goltermann): As much as I have seen they were white.
You have stated that you are a married woman. What did those stains appear to be?
I have not inspected them so nearly, but I have seen that they are white.
– Extracts from The Trial at Large of Her Majesty Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, published in 1821.
Most Gracious Queen, we thee implore
To go away and sin no more;
But if that effort be too great
To go away, at any rate.
Satirical verse prompted by Thomas Denman, Caroline's defence counsel, alluding in his closing speech to the words of Christ to the woman taken in adultery: 'Go away and sin no more.'
Unless a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances had condemned me to become the pretext of a trial which at the present moment pre-fixes the attention of the two worlds, I should never have exchanged the gratification of enjoying my recollections in peace for the fatal honours of celebrity; but as a wicked administration abuses my name, for the purposes of tarnishing the lustre of one of the finest crowns of Europe, and of ruining an amiable princess, I ought to speak. My silence would embolden calumny – my disclosures will make it pallid …
We cannot control fate; an irresistible power impels us, and Pergami was reserved to accomplish the purposes which providence had thrown from heaven upon Pergami.
I think I still feel the chilly tremor which seized me when [a gypsy fortune teller] told me in a solemn voice: 'You will be humbled in order to be exalted – you will save a great princess at the hazard of your own life – the injustice of men will punish you for the gratitude of a woman – your good fortune will sow the seeds of discord in a great empire, and your name will fill the world.
– From Memoir of Baron Pergami, written by himself, October 1820, translated and reprinted by the True Briton newspaper in London.
Courtier: Sire, your greatest enemy is dead.
George IV: Is she, by God!
– Exchange that is supposed to have taken place in 1821 when the king was told of the death of Napoleon (5 May).
The blessing which the protecting hand of God in his mercy has bestowed upon me in this recent event is so great I even yet can hardly bring myself to believe that it is really so. It has literally turned one almost quite topsy-turvy. I trust that it affords me a fair prospect of real and true happiness for the rest of my days …
– George IV's reaction to Caroline's death, which had occurred two days earlier, reported by Sir William Knighton, keeper of the Privy Purse, in his diary on 10 August 1821.
George IV at the end of his life
He has become enormous, like a feather bed.
– Mary, duchess of Gloucester, the king's favourite sister.
Blind as a beetle.
– George IV's own description of his deteriorating eyesight, as reported by Sir William Knighton, keeper of the Privy Purse to George IV, in his diary, February 1830. The king was reduced to signing official documents with an ink-stamp.
He is only happy when ill.
– Attributed to Lady Conyngham, George IV's last mistress, by Princess Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to Britain.
Lady Conyngham thinks he shams.
– Harriet Arbuthnot, The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot 1820-1832. Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of a Tory MP, was the duke of Wellington's mistress.
There is much about my early life that I now repent, but as king I have always tried to benefit my subjects. I have shown mercy to others, and hope that it will be shown to me.
– George IV's confession to Archdeacon Glover, a few weeks before his death.
My boy, this is death.
– George IV's last reported words, said on 4 June 1830 – apparently uttered in a tone of surprise rather than one of resignation.
The day following George IV's death, The Times of London castigated his 'unceasing and unbounded prodigality' and his 'indifference to the feelings of others'. His most celebrated monument was dismissed as 'that mountebank Pavilion – a cluster of pagodas at Brighton'.
There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased King … of all known beings the most selfish. Nothing remains to be said about George IV but to pay, as pay we must, for his profusion.
– The Times, the day after George IV's funeral.
The fact is he is a spoiled, selfish, odious beast and has no idea of doing anything but what is agreeable to himself … he only wishes to be powerful in order to exercise the most puerile caprices, gratify ridiculous resentments, indulge vulgar prejudices and amass or squander money; not one object connected with national glory or prosperity ever enters his brain.
– Sir Charles Greville, 2nd son of the earl of Warwick, clerk to the Privy Council, Memoirs 1814-1860.
He [George IV] had never given away or parted with anything. There was a prodigious quantity of hair – women's hair – of all colours and lengths, gages d'amour which he had got at balls and with the perspiration still marked on the fingers …
– Duke of Wellington, acting as the dead king's executor, reported in Charles Greville, Memoirs 1814-1860.
Volumes of love letters … trinkets of all sorts, quantities of women's gloves, dirty snuffy pocket handkerchiefs with old faded nosegays tied up in them; in short, such a collection of trash as he had never seen before. He [Wellington] thought the best thing would be to burn them all.
– Duke of Wellington, acting as George IV's executor, reported by Harriet Arbuthnot.
