Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (46 page)

The long-delayed coronation took place in July 1821. Caroline was not invited. Nevertheless, she turned up at Westminster Abbey, only to be refused admission because she was unable to produce an invitation. Caroline created a scene, and then the waiting public turned on her. Having had her victory, she should not spoil everyone’s day. Caroline hastily returned to her home, where she immediately fell ill, complaining of having been poisoned. The problem of the ‘unconventional’ queen was resolved when Caroline died 19 days later. Very convenient and rather suspicious.

A king at last at 59 years of age, George’s patronage of the arts continued. In 1824, he talked the Government into purchasing for the nation the art collection of the late John Julius Angerstein, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had become a successful Lloyds underwriter and philanthropist. To house Angerstein’s collection, the National Gallery was created. It is ironic that the mistake of not buying the art collection of an Englishman (Walpole), so enabling it to become the basis for the principal Russian art gallery, was in part remedied by buying the art collection of a Russian (Angerstein), so enabling it to become the basis for the principal English art gallery.

New buildings were still a passion, as John Nash was commissioned to convert Buckingham House into a palace, although he was dismissed from the project when George IV died. Nash also designed Marble Arch, which was, until it was moved in 1851, a gateway to the Palace.

Much as he loved new buildings, George had a greater passion – his appetite. He just would not control his eating and drinking. His waist was over 58 inches, his weight over 25 stones (350 pounds or 160 kilos), and with pain from gout, he could barely move. Gout is aggravated by red meat, seafood and alcohol. George was unrestrained. His doctors prescribed laudanum, an alcoholic preparation containing opium and morphine. Unfortunately, it is addictive, and it was given to George in ever-increasing quantities to ease the pain. Laudanum is also dangerous – as little as a teaspoonful can cause death.

For the last three years of his life, George was hardly ever seen in public. In fact, he spent most of his time in bed, drinking cherry brandy and eating without reserve. It was in bed that George appointed Wellington as Prime Minister, Wellington soon forcing George to agree to Catholic emancipation, giving them almost full civil rights. It was also in bed that George learned of the death of the heir, his brother Frederick Duke of York. So William Duke of Clarence moved up to first in line, followed by the daughter of the late Edward Duke of Kent, young Alexandrina.

On 26th June 1830, George IV died from a ruptured blood vessel, perhaps the result of heart disease, perhaps high blood pressure; or maybe his doctors killed him by prescribing so much laudanum. Whichever it was, in the end he was a physical mess. He had been too ashamed of his grotesque appearance to allow Mrs Fitzherbert, his only true love, to visit him. She was one of the very few to mourn his death.

On the death of George IV without surviving legitimate children, the throne passed to his second brother, William Duke of Clarence, the first brother Frederick Duke of York having already died without leaving legitimate children.

As a child, William had not been expected to become king, so at the age of thirteen his education was halted and he was sent to serve in the navy, which is why he was known as ‘the Sailor King’. Naval life plus natural arrogance resulted in William’s appalling social conduct and foul language; although his constant spitting in public seems to have been regarded as eccentricity.

When he was twenty-five, William retired from the navy with the rank of Rear Admiral. To his annoyance, on the outbreak of war with France, William was not given a command. So in 1813 he travelled to the Low Countries to watch British forces who were besieging Antwerp. To get a better view, William climbed up a church steeple. William stood there, calmly surveying the scene, oblivious to the danger. He had been spotted; someone took aim and fired. A shot rang out and the bullet went straight through William’s coat; fortunately he was uninjured. Having avoided death by a few inches, he returned to England.

In 1791, William had taken up with the leading comic actress of the time, Dorothea Jordan. Although she had never married, Dorothea already had three daughters from previous relationships. She moved in with William, and over the years produced five boys and five girls – the Fitzclarences.

Dorothea’s real surname was Bland; she biblically adopted Jordan as a stage name after she crossed the waters from Ireland. She continued with her acting career for a time in order to provide for her three older daughters, as William was always short of money.

After struggling with debt for 20 years, William decided that the only solution was for him to marry a rich woman. As a first step he threw Dorothea out, agreeing to pay her £2,900 a year plus a further £1,500 a year on condition that she did not return to the stage, which she had left some years earlier. If she did start acting again, then the £1,500 a year was to be forfeited and she would lose custody of the Fitzclarence daughters.

However, Dorothea needed more money to provide for her older daughters, and she also wanted to help one of her sons-in-law who was in financial difficulties. So, she returned to the theatre. The £1,500 a year was immediately cancelled, and the Fitzclarence daughters were taken away. Then another of her sons-in-law defrauded Dorothea, and she found herself penniless. Having asked William for help, she fled to France to escape her creditors. William did nothing, and Dorothea died a year later, totally destitute.

After having marriage proposals rejected by several rich Englishwomen, William set his sights on the Tsar’s sister. She was not interested, finding William awkward and unpleasant. Besides, he was the third son of the King, and not likely to succeed to the crown.

He gave up the chase. Things changed when his brother George’s daughter, Princess Charlotte, died. The Queen told William that he must marry, but he had lost his enthusiasm. Anyway, it would have to be a minor German princess who would bring a small dowry. He pleaded that with heavy debts, ten illegitimate children and now in his fifties it would be madness.

The Queen and the Prime Minister were not put off. Lord Liverpool promised to raise William’s annual allowance to £40,000 if he married. Finally, after further rejections, it was arranged for William to marry the 26-year-old Princess Adelheid (Adelaide in English) of Saxe-Meiningen. When it was put to Parliament, they would only increase William’s allowance by £6,000 a year. William rejected it in disgust. Nevertheless, William and Adelaide married in July 1818, and to save money they went to live in Hanover.

In 1820, George IV became king. William was now second in line. He only had to survive his two older brothers to take the crown.

Adelaide’s first child, a daughter, died after one day. When Adelaide became pregnant again, William decided that they should return to London so that the child would be born in England. The journey was too much for Adelaide, and she miscarried in Calais. In December 1820, she gave birth to a daughter, but the baby died after four months. The miscarriage of twin boys in 1822 spelled the end of William’s hopes of producing an heir – if the twins had lived, the choice of heir might have been tricky. It was now clear that even if William became king, he would be followed by the daughter of his late younger brother, the Duke of Kent.

Belatedly, William agreed to accept the increase of £6,000 a year in his allowance, and he also claimed the arrears as Adelaide improved his finances and his behaviour. Within three years, both Frederick Duke of York and George IV had died, and at the age of 64 William became the oldest person to be crowned the British monarch.
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In the light of George IV’s behaviour, the monarchy had become very unpopular. All that was done to commemorate him was to erect a 60 foot high monument with a statue of George on the top at a crossroads in north London. Even that was demolished a few years later, although in its memory the area became known as King’s Cross.

In stark contrast to his predecessor, William insisted that as little as possible was to be spent on his coronation. He took every opportunity to show himself in public, and little by little the position of the monarchy was restored.

The only people who were not satisfied with the new king were his grasping illegitimate sons, the Fitzclarences. They had very high ideas about themselves, and were constantly demanding peerages, official positions and money. Even when the oldest had been created Earl of Munster and the others had been given the precedence of the younger child of a marquess, entitling them to the prefix ‘Lord’, they did not stop their complaints. On the other hand, the Fitzclarence daughters were no trouble at all; indeed, one of them, Elizabeth, is the 4 x great-grandmother of Prime Minister David Cameron.
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One thing that did not please William was the newlycompleted Buckingham Palace. He refused to move in, offering it unsuccessfully to the army for a barracks and to the Government as a replacement Houses of Parliament when the original parliament building burned down in 1834.

More serious problems came with demands for parliamentary reform. Apart from the recent emancipation of Catholics, nothing had changed for years. In particular, no changes in representation had been made to take account of the population growth of the great cities. Cornwall had 44 MPs; Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds had none. Voting was limited, with qualification differing from place to place. Also, the absence of a secret ballot meant that the rich and powerful could control voting in many constituencies.

39 He is therefore a fifth cousin twice removed (a fifth cousin separated by two generations) of the Queen; but as his descent from William IV is via illegitimacy, it gives him no place in the line to the crown.

New Prime Minister Wellington defended the system, saying it was “as near perfection as possible”, and would not countenance any changes. Following an attack by protesters on Wellington’s London home, he had the windows covered with metal shutters. It was for that reason, nothing to do with his military accomplishments, that he acquired the nickname ‘the Iron Duke’. Parliament was not with Wellington, and he was forced to resign. William called on the leader of the Whigs, Earl Grey, to form a government. He had to act quickly – executions and transportations to Australia would not silence protest for long.

The Reform Bill of 1831 proposed greater changes than anyone expected: redistribution of seats, reduction in the property qualification for voters, disenfranchisement of many rotten boroughs with only a handful of voters and of pocket boroughs in the gift of wealthy patrons, a two-day ballot instead of 40 days of voting, and a 60% increase in the electorate. In the Commons it was close, the second reading passed by 302 votes to 301. Then the Government was defeated by eight votes, and an election was called. The result was an increase in the number of members supporting reform, as those who controlled votes did not dare to oppose reformers for fear of violence. Once more, the Reform Bill was introduced, and it was passed by the House of Commons. The real test was the House of Lords; they threw it out by 41 votes.

A Lords versus Commons battle was exactly what William had feared. The obduracy of the House of Lords, whose own position was entirely unaffected by the proposed changes, led to riots across the country. Nottingham Castle was burned to the ground, and there was huge damage and considerable numbers of casualties in Bristol, Derby and elsewhere. A new Bill had to be introduced in Parliament before the situation got out of hand; mass insurrection was a distinct possibility.

Negotiations with the Lords got nowhere, and in late 1831 a slightly modified Bill was introduced. Grey asked the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to ensure victory in the Lords. William agreed, but on condition that peerages went only to people who were already heirs to peerages, so that in time the membership of the House of Lords would be unchanged.

When the lords learned of the plan, many of them moved from support or undecided to opposition. That meant that more new lords than originally anticipated would be needed. All the Royal Family pressured the King to refuse to help Grey. The Queen, brought up in a minor despotic state, was most vociferous, only to be told by William that “English politics are not to be understood by any German”.

Grey informed the King that he needed about 50 new peers. The problem was that there were not that many adult heirs to peerages available. William told Grey that he would never agree to ennoble commoners. Defeated in a Lords vote, the Government resigned.

William’s quandary was that he could not find anyone willing to lead an administration that would agree to minor reform. Whigs were for full reform, Tories were against any reform. The country was on the edge, with mass demonstrations, refusals to pay tax and a run on gold. William’s popularity vanished overnight; his opposition to the creation of peers was seen as the main obstacle to change.