George IV

George IV (1762–1830), king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1820–30), and king of Hanover. Brought up under strict discipline by his parents George III and Queen Charlotte, he was a high‐spirited boy. In 1780 his father had to buy back the letters he had written to the actress Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson. George then fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert. They married secretly in 1785 without his father's consent, so that the marriage was illegal under the Royal Marriage Act, and as she was a Roman catholic it would have prevented his succession to the throne.

George was fascinated by the arts and had a lifelong mania for building. In 1787 he applied to Parliament for additional funds to pay his debts, but had to authorize his friend Charles Fox to deny in the House of Commons that he was married. His subsequent disclosure of the truth to Charles Grey resulted in a breach between him and his Whig political allies. They made up the quarrel in 1788 when his father suffered his first attack of mental illness, the Whigs proposing that George should be made regent with full use of all royal prerogatives, hoping that he would change the government in their favour. Pitt defeated their scheme by proposing limitations on the regent's powers, but the king recovered before the regency came into effect.

When the French Revolutionary War began in 1793, George was again deeply in debt owing to the cost of building and furnishing Carlton House, his London residence, and the pavilion at Brighton. In return for financial help the king insisted that he should marry a protestant princess, to secure the royal succession. The choice fell upon Caroline of Brunswick‐Wolfenbüttel in 1795. George, however, took an instant dislike to her coarse language, and flighty manner. They separated soon afterwards, though he had managed to father a child, Princess Charlotte, born nine months after the wedding.

During the Napoleonic War of 1803–15 George was again unsuccessful in obtaining a military command. After Fox's death in 1806 he severed his political connection with the Whigs and in 1810, when his father's illness became permanent and he was appointed prince regent, he confirmed the existing Tory ministers in office. During the later war and post‐war years he was very unpopular with his subjects, who contrasted his lavish life‐style with the distress of the country. When he became king in 1820 his attempt to divorce his wife by a parliamentary Bill of Pains and Penalties on the grounds of her alleged immoralities aroused a public outcry against him in view of his own infidelities. His popularity sank to its nadir during this period but Caroline's death in 1821 and recovery from the economic recession marked a turning‐point. George's love of pageantry, given full rein in the magnificent coronation which he himself designed in 1821, helped to boost his popularity.

George IV attempted to exert authority over his ministers and their policies, but he lacked political skill and persistence and he could always be outmanœuvred or outfaced. He was compelled to accept the repeal of religious discrimination against dissenters and catholics in 1828–9 and his reign witnessed a further decline in the ‘influence of the crown’.