7* 



OEORQK IV. 



GEORGE IV. 



of the parti** -when the fint investigation into the conduct of the 

 prinorn took place in the latter part of the year 1806, by a com- 

 tuiion cc.M-titutrd by royal warrant, and oonaisting of th late lords 

 Krakiue, Grenville. Spencer, and EUenborougb, all then members of 

 the cabinet. The allegations which led to tbii investigation pro- 

 ceeded front Sir Julia and Lady Douglas, who charged her royal 

 hi t l.ii<- not only with great impropriety and indecency of behaviour, 

 but with having been delivered in 1802 of a male child, whom she 

 bad ever tince brought up and retained near her under the name of 

 William Au.-iin. The report of the commissioners decidedly acquitted 

 her roynl highneai on the Utter and main charge ; but added that 

 there were other particulars deposed to by the witnesses examined 

 respecting her conduct, "such as must, especially considering her 

 exalted rank and station, necessarily give occasion to very unfavour- 

 ble interpretations." The report however, and the answer of the 



princess (drawn up by her confidential advisers. Lord Kldon, Mr. 

 Perceval, and Sir Thomas Plumer), together with other papers, having 

 been afterwards submitted to the cabinet council (the Whigs were 



now out of office), it was declared by a minute dated 22nd of April 

 1807, to be the unanimous opinion of the members not only that the 

 two main charges of pregnancy aud delivery were completely disproved, 

 but " that all other particulars of conduct brought in accusation 

 against her royal highness, to which the character of crimiiinlity can 

 be ascribed, are satisfactorily contradicted, or rest upon evidence 

 undeserving of credit" With the exception of these decisions, all 

 the proceedings in this affair were kept secret for some years; but 

 the depositions of the witnesses and the other papers were at length 

 surreptitiously published in 1813, in the well-known volume entitled 

 ' The Book.' The history of the investigation into the conduct of 

 the princess is in all its stages curiously illustrative of the move- 

 ments and changes of position of the two great political parties ; she 

 was condemned or acquitted by the official reporters upon her con- 

 duct, according as the party to which her husband attached himself 

 or their opponents happened to be in power, and her cause was taken 

 up by either as the prince bestowed his favour upon the other. 



On the king being taken ill in the end of 1810 the Prince of Wales 

 was in the first instance appointed regent, with restricted powers, and 

 for only one year. He entered upon his office by being sworn in 

 before the privy council, 3rd of February 1811. The restrictions 

 however were removed in the beginning of the following year. On 

 thus becoming king in everything but in name, the prince disap- 

 pointed the expectations of a great part of the public by retaining 

 ilr. Perceval and the other ministers whom he had found in office on 

 assuming the direction of the government. In fact no change in the 

 policy of the government was produced by the regency : the prince 

 threw off at once both his former associates and their principles. It 

 is impossible, even if it were desirable, here to recount, except very 

 cursorily, the succeeding course of events respecting a large portion 

 of which indeed, from their recentness, every reader must be supposed 

 to possess a more complete knowledge than we can here attempt to 

 supply. The course of public occurrences down to 1820 has been 

 shortly noticed in the preceding article. In the beginning of 1813, 

 the unhappy differences between the prince and his wife again became 

 the subject of parliamentary and public discussion, in consequence of 

 the publication by the princess in the newspapers of a letter which 

 she bad addressed to the prince, remonstrating against some steps 

 that had been taken in relation to the Princess Charlotte. Upon that 

 occasion the privy council, on the matter being submitted to them 

 by the prince, reported that under all the circumstances of the case 

 it was highly fit and proper " that the intercourse between her royal 

 highness the Princess of Wales and her royal highness the Princess 

 Charlotte should continue to be subject to regulation and restraint." 

 Her former friend.*, the Tories, had now completely abandoned the 

 cause of the Princess of Wales ; the second name attached to this 

 report was that of her recent confidential adviser, Lord Eldon. The 

 publication of 'The Book' immediately followed. In 1814 the visit 

 of the Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia to London, after the 

 peace of Paris, led to renewed exposure and agitation, by the regent 

 refui-ing to meet the princess at the drawing-room held by the queen 

 for the reception of the foreign sovereigns. In resentment for her 

 exclusion on this occasion, her royal highness left the country in the 

 beginning of August, having first asked and obtained permission to 

 make a tour on the Continent. It was understood that the intention 

 now was to marry the Princess Charlotte to tho Prince of Orange, 

 eldest son of the King of tho Netherlands ; but on the 2nd of May 

 1816 she was married to Prince Leopold George Frederic of Saxe- 

 Coburg, tho present king of Belgium. Her melancholy death in 

 childbed followed on the 6th of November 1817, an event which 

 placed tho Duke of York next in succession to the crown. On the 

 6th of January, in this last-mentioned year, when the Prince Regent 

 went to open parliament, he was shot at on bis return through the 

 park ; two balls perforated the glass of the carriage. This occurrence 

 and the excited state of the country led to the suspension of the 

 Habeas Corpus Act, and to various other measures curtailing the 

 public liberties. At this time, of seven sons of the king no one had 

 any issue ; in these circumstances, in order to provide for the con- 

 tinuance of the line of succession, tho dukes of Clarence, of Kent, 

 and of Cambridge were all married in the course of the year 1818. 



The Duke of Cumberland had been married in 1815, but his son, the 

 present King of Hanover, was not born till 1819. 

 ' The Prince Regent ascended the throne as George IV. on tbe 

 death of bis father, January 29, 1820. The first great public event 

 of the new reign was the detection, on the 23rd of February, of the 

 Cato-street plot to assassinate the ministers. Queen Caroline arrived 

 in London on the 6th of June, and on the evening of the same day 

 message from tbe king was delivered to both houses of parliament, 

 communicating papers respecting her alleged misconduct while abroad. 

 On the 5th of July, a bill for divorcing and degrading her was intro- 

 duced into the House of Lords by the premier, Lord Liverpool ; the 

 examination of witnesses in support and refutation of tho charges on 

 which this measure professed to be founded occupied sonic succeeding 

 months. On the 6th of November, the second reading of the bill 

 was carried by a majority of 123 to 95 ; on the 10th the third reading 

 was only carried by 108 to 99; on this division, which destroyed all 

 chance of the measure passing the Commons, it was abandoned. Tbe 

 queen however did not long survive her escape. The coronation of 

 the king took place on the 19th of July 1821, when her majesty, 

 having previously churned it as her legal right to be crowned at the 

 same time as queen consort, was repulsed in an attempt to obtain 

 admission at the doors both of Westminster Hall and the Abbey. A 

 few days after she was taken ill, and died at Braudenburgh House, 

 Hammersmith, on the 7th of August. The king was at this time absent 

 on a visit to Ireland ; in the end of September he set out for Hanover, 

 from which he did not return till the beginning of November; and in 

 August following he went to Scotland. The suicide of the Marquis 

 of Londonderry, secretary for foreign affairs, occurred while the king 

 was absent on this last visit, and produced gome change in tho foreign 

 policy of the administration. [CANNING, QEOKUE.] The year 1822 

 was marked by severe agricultural distress and much dUcontent in 

 England, aud by more serious disturbances in Ireland. 



Of the foreign transactions of the two or three following years, the 

 most important were the recognition of the new states of South 

 America, by sending consuls to them in October 1823 ; the contest 

 with the Aghantees in IS'Ji ; and the commencement in April of that 

 year of the Burmese war, which terminated in February 1826, in the 

 treaty of Yandaboo, giving the British a considerable accession of 

 territory on the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal. Of domestic 

 events during the same period, the most memorable is the great com- 

 mercial crisis of December 1825. In December 1826, a body of troops 

 was sent to Portugal to support the prince-s regent and the consti- 

 tution established by Don Pedro against the hostile attempts of the 

 Spanish government aud of the absolutist faction organised by that 

 power ; the British force speedily put down the rebellion and restored 

 tranquillity. The death of the Duke of York. January 22, 1827, 

 transferred the character of heir presumptive to the Duke of Clarence ; 

 and the office of commander-in-cbief, in which the Duke of York had 

 been replaced soon after tbe commencement of the regency, to the 

 Duke of Wellington. The termination of the political life of Lord 

 Liverpool by a stroke of apoplexy followed on the 17th of February ; 

 the consequence of which was a complete change of ministry. In the 

 beginning of April Mr. Canning was appointed first lord of the 

 treasury, and soon after chancellor of the exchequer, on which the 

 great body of the Whigs became the supporters of the new adminis- 

 tration, while it was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, 

 Mr. Peel, and others of the premier's former friends and colleagues. 

 [CANNING, GEORGE.] The death of Mr. Canning however, on the 8th 

 of August, made a new arrangement necessary. Viscount Goderich 

 (now Earl of Ripon) then became premier, tho Duke of Wellington 

 being reappointed to the command of the forces, with a seat in the 

 cabinet. Some time after this arrangement had been completed, the 

 news arrived of the destruction of the Turkish fleet in the Bay of 

 Navarino in Greece, by the attack of the combined squadrons of 

 England, France, and Russia ; an occurrence which in his majesty's 

 speech, delivered at the opening of parliament, 29th of January 1828, 

 was characterised as " a collision wholly unexpected," and an " un- 

 toward event." Meanwhile differences, of which various explanations 

 were afterwards given, but which may be suspected to have had some 

 relation to the affairs of Greece and Turkey, as well as to other 

 matters both of foreign and domestic policy, bad led to the resigna- 

 tion of Lord Godericb, and the appointment, on the 25th of January, 

 of the Duke of Wellington as first lord of the treasury. The new 

 ministry however was still composed in part of the friends of the 

 late Mr. Canning, as well as of the members of the Tory party. This 

 state of things lasted till the end of May, when a sudden misunder- 

 standing or difference of opinion produced the resignation of Mr. 

 Huskisson, which was immediately followed by that of Lord Dudley, 

 Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Charles Grant. The ministry now came 

 once more to be composed wholly of persons generally considered as 

 belonging to the extreme, which was at the same time the main 

 division of the Tory party. In particular, every member of the 

 cabinet had hitherto been resolutely and steadily opposed to the 

 concession of what was called tbe emancipation of the Roman 

 Catholics, and indeed to every other proposed mitigation, whether in 

 substance or even in form, of the rigid Protestantism of the state 

 institutions. The most important among the other events of this 

 year were, the return, on the 5th of July, of Mr. O'Counell, although a 



