721 



WILLIAM IV. (OF ENGLAND). 



after a visit to Prague, returned to Italy, where he spent the winter. 

 Having come back to England in the spring of 1785, he was, after 

 the usual examination, passed as a lieutenant on the 17th of June, 

 and appointed third lieuteuant of the Hebe frigate, in which he soon 

 after made a voyage round the British Islands. In April 1786, 

 having previously risen to be second lieutenant of the Hebe, he was 

 removed to the Pegasus, and received his commission aa captain. In 

 this ship he soon after sailed to Newfoundland, thence to Halifax in 

 Nova Scotia, and thence to Antigua, where he found his friend Nelson 

 commanding on the Leeward Islands station. In June 1787, he was 

 ordered to Jamaica, from which however he soon after took upon 

 him to return without instructions to Halifax : for that irregularity 

 he was ordered to Quebec, but, after staying there a short time, he 

 ventured again to take his own course, and set sail for England. He 

 arrived at Cork in December, but was' immediately ordered to repair 

 with his ship to Plymouth ; and when he got there he was by another 

 Admiralty order expressly forbidden to quit that port without per- 

 mission. In the end it was directed that his punishment should be 

 to remain at Plymouth for as long a time as he had absented himself 

 from hia station without orders, and then to return to Halifax and 

 the West Indies, and to remain there till he should be ordered home. 

 He went out accordingly in command of the Andromeda, and 

 remained, principally at Jamaica, till the spring of 1789. 



The disposition he had shown to break through the ordinary rules 

 of discipline, and the impossibility that was found to exist of imposing 

 an adequate punishment on a prince of the blood, probably led 

 to the determination that his royal highiiess's further professional 

 career should be confined to a formal ascent through the successive 

 honours or nominal distinctions of the service. In May 1789, imme- 

 diately after his return home, he was raised to the peerage, with the 

 titles of Duke of Clarence and St. Andrews and Earl of Munster ; and 

 an income of 12,0002. a year was settled upon him by parliament. 

 The next year, after commanding for a short time the Valiant, of 74. 

 guns, on that ship being paid off he was promoted to the rank of rear- 

 admiral of the blue ; he was made rear-admiral of the red in 1793, 

 vice-admiral of the blue in 1794, vice-admiral of the red in 1795, 

 admiral of the blue in 1799, and admiral of the fleet in 1801. During 

 all this time however his royal highness remained without employ- 

 ment, living on shore as a private individual with Mrs. Jordan, with 

 whom he had formed a connection in 1791, which lasted for twenty 

 years, and produced a family of five sons and five daughters, of 

 whom the eldest son was created Earl of Munster in 1831, and is 

 since dead. The duke however frequently took part in the debates 

 of the House of Lords, and was at least a tolerably fluent if not a 

 very elegant or logical speaker. One of the subjects in reference to 

 which he particularly distinguished himself was the abolition of the 

 slave-trade, of which he was one of the most determined opponents, 

 not a little to the injury of his popularity for some years. From 

 1797, when he was appointed to the office of ranger, he usually 

 resided at Bushy Park. 



In his general politics the Duke of Clarence attached himself, with 

 his brother the Prince of Wales, from his first entrance upon public 

 life, to the party of the Whig opposition; but he also followed the 

 prince in giving his support to Pitt after the commencement of the 

 war with France in 1793. On the return of Pitt to power however, 

 after the ejection of the Addington administration, in 1804, he again 

 joined the opposition with the prince and the Duke of Sussex ; and 

 after Pitt's death he gave a zealous support to the new ministry of 

 Fox and Grenville on all subjects except only the abolition of the 

 slave-trade, which he opposed to the last, in common with all his 

 brothers. The ministry of 1806 raised his parliamentary allowance, 

 and that of each of the other male branches of the royal family, from 

 12,0002. to 18.000Z. per annum. 



Towards the close of the war his royal highness was permitted for 

 a short time to hoist his flag in the Jason to view the military opera- 

 tions going forward on the Dutch coast ; and after the peace he per- 

 formed the holiday services of bringing over the Duchess of Olden- 

 burg to Sheerness, and accompanying Louis XVIII. to the French 

 coast in that ship, and afterwards of bringing the Emperor of Russia 

 and the King of Prussia to England in the Impregnable. 



On the llth of July 1818, the duke was married at Kew to the 

 Princess Adelaide Louisa Theresa Caroline Amelia, (the late Queen- 

 Dowager Adelaide), eldest daughter of George Frederic Charles, duke 

 of Saxe-Meiningen. Their union produced two daughters, one born in 

 March 1819, the other in December 1820, both of whom died in infancy. 

 Upon his marriage 60002. was added by parliament to the income of 

 his royal highness. In 1827, when the death of the Duke of York 

 had placed the Duke of Clarence in the situation of heir presumptive 

 to the throne, a further increase of 30002. was made to his annual 

 allowance, aud the sum of 60002. a year~"was at the same time settled 

 upon the duchess. On the elevation of Mr. Canning to the premier- 

 ship in April of this year, he placed the duke at the head of the 

 Admiralty, with the office of lord high admiral, but without a seat in 

 the cabinet. This office however his royal highness only held till 

 the following September ; and he returned again to private life, till 

 the death of George IV., on Saturday, the 26th of June 1830, raised 

 him to the throne. 



The course of events during the reign of William IV. derived its 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. VI. 



WILLIAM IV. (OF ENGLAND). 722 



direction and character from the memorable movements on the con- 

 tinent of Europe with which the accession of a new king in England 

 chanced to be coincident. The publication of the ordinances of 

 Charles X. against the press in France took place exactly a month 

 after King William's accession : then rapidly followed the revolution 

 of the Three Days in Paris, the dethronement of Charles, the trans- 

 ference of the French crown to the Duke of Orleans, and after the 

 lapse of another month the commencement of the similar revolution 

 in Brussels, which terminated in the separation of Holland and 

 Belgium. In England the first symptom of wide-spread popular un- 

 easiness, disaffection, aud tendency to outbreak was given by the 

 numerous incendiary fires which alarmed the country in the months 

 of September and October. The new parliament, elected since the 

 accession of the new king, met on the 26th of October. On the 7th 

 of November immense excitement was occasioned in the metropolis 

 and elsewhere by the announcement of the resolution come to by the 

 responsible advisers of his majesty that he could not venture with 

 safety to his person to dine on that evening with the lord mayor and 

 corporation of the city of London in Guildhall. This was followed 

 on that day week by the resignation of the Duke of Wellington, Sir 

 Robert Peel, and the other ministers, on Sir Henry Parnell carrying 

 his motion in the House of Commons for referring the settlement of 

 the civil list to a select committee, by a majority of 233 against 204 ; 

 and within another week the Grey administration was in office under 

 the banner of parliamentary reform. Meanwhile commotion and con- 

 fusion were spreading on the continent. Besides some minor erup- 

 tions of the same kind, the insurrection in Poland broke out in the 

 end of November an unhappy attempt, which was entirely un- 

 successful. 



On the 1st of March 1831, Lord John Russell, as the organ of the 

 cabinet, and, as was universally believed, with the concurrence of his 

 majesty, moved in the House of Commons the first reading of the first 

 Reform Bill. On the 22nd of the same month the second reading was 

 carried by a majority of one ; or by 302 votes against 301. But on 

 the 20th of April ministers were beaten by 299 against 291 on 

 General Gascoigne's motion for striking out the part of their reform 

 scheme which diminished the number of members of the House of 

 Commons ; and two days after parliament was dissolved, with the 

 avowed design of ascertaining by a new election the sense of tho 

 people on the measure which had been thus for the present defeated 

 or abandoned. The new parliament assembled on the 14th of June, 

 and the success of the ministerial appeal to the people was shown by 

 the second reading of a second Reform Bill being carried in the 

 House of Commons on the 4th of July by a majority of 367 to 251. 

 It was not till the 19th of September that the House came to a vote 

 on the third reading ; but that too was carried by a large majority, 

 by 349 against 236. The measure however was defeated in the Upper 

 House on the 3rd of October, by the second reading being nega- 

 tived by a majority of 199 to 158. On the 20th parliament was 

 prorogued. 



A new session commenced on the 6th of December ; and on the 

 12th Lord John Russell introduced the third Reform Bill, the second 

 reading of which was carried on the 17th by a majority of 324 against 

 162. If the friends of the measure had not become more numerous, 

 it was evident that its opponents were growing weary of the contest, 

 and were hopeless of ultimately averting it. On the third reading 

 nevertheless, the vote upon which did not take place till the 19th of 

 March 1832, the opposition mustered again in their former force, and 

 the motion was resisted by 239 against 355. This time the measure was 

 also so far successful in the Lords that the second reading was carried 

 in that House, on the 13th of April, by a majority of 184 against 175. 

 But on the 7th of May ministers were defeated by a majority of 151 

 to 115, on Lord Lyndhurst's motion for postponing the considera- 

 tion of the first (or disfranchising) clause of the bill j on which they 

 immediately resigned, A ministerial interregnum of nearly a fort- 

 night's duration ensued ; but by the 17th Earl Grey and his friends 

 were again in power : the most stringent methods are understood 

 to have been employed, with the consent of the king, to keep 

 back the refractory peers ; and on the 4th of June the Lords 

 passed the bill by a large majority, 106 voting for the motion, and 

 only 22 against it. It received the royal assent, and became law, 

 three days after. 



The bringing about of this change thus occupied, almost to the 

 exclusion of all other measures or questions, the first two years of 

 the reign of William. The action of the new machinery of represen- 

 tation then commenced. Tho parliament which had passed the 

 Reform Bill was dissolved on the 3rd of December ; and the first par- 

 liament elected under the new system assembled on the 29th of 

 January 1833. The reform of the representation was now followed 

 by the abolition of colonial slavery, the reform of the poor laws, and 

 the reform of the Irish church. At the eame time the Reform 

 ministry underwent a succession of changes. First in March 1833, 

 Lord Durham resigned the privy seal from illness ; next followed, in 

 the end of May 1834, the retirement of Mr. Stanley (now the Earl of 

 Derby), Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon, and the Duke of Richmond, 

 on an avowed difference with their colleagues : and finally, on the 9th 

 of July, Lord Grey himself and Lord Althorp relinquished office in 

 consequence of a misunderstanding with Mr. O'Connell in regard to 



