George IV

George IV (1762-1830), the king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1820 to 1830, was one of the most detested British monarchs. He was also a man of exquisite taste who profoundly influenced the culture of his age.

Regency England, roughly the first 3 decades of the 19th century, takes its name from George's title of prince regent, which he held from 1811 to 1820. It was a period of great elegance in art, architecture, and the style of aristocratic life, and also one of unrestrained indulgence and moral laxity. The prince regent set the example in both respects.

The future George IV was born on Aug. 12, 1762. His father, George III, an extremely moral and pious man, loved his eldest child as a son, but hated him as his heir. For both reasons the young prince was kept under a very tight rein and carefully insulated from the outside world. In 1783, when the prince came of age, he violently reacted against these restraints and entered society with a great splash. George was tall and handsome, with a tendency toward portliness, which in maturity was to become gross obesity. He entered into the pleasures of life with gusto, and Mrs. Fitzherbert soon emerged as the first of a succession of mistresses. He began to indulge his passion for building, and the Royal Pavilion at Brighton was begun in 1784. By 1787 the prince was already hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt and had to be bailed out by Parliament, the first of many such occasions.

The prince's escapades strained relations with his father, and political differences increased the tension between them. The prince became the intimate friend of George III's bitterest political enemies, the Whigs, led by Charles James Fox. Fox was a man of immense personal charm, and Whig society was the most glittering group of the day. The Whigs fought the prince's battles for money in Parliament; he entered fully into their political schemes. Together they waited in 1788 in ill-disguised anticipation that the King's insanity would prove permanent and that the prince would become regent.

George III, however, recovered. The prince had not been able to grasp power, and his reputation had suffered. It suffered still further from a secret, and illegal, marriage to the Catholic Mrs. Fitzherbert, which soon became common knowledge. In 1795, at his father's urging, the prince decided to regularize his position and increase his income by making a legitimate marriage. The choice of Princess Caroline of Brunswick could not have been more unfortunate; she was coarse, vulgar, and wildly eccentric. It was an arranged marriage, and the prince detested her from first sight. The marriage was barely consummated when the couple separated. Princess Charlotte, their only child, died in 1817. Caroline's notorious affairs in England and abroad only served to underline George's own sexual irregularities, and their interminable bickering until her death in 1821 surrounded the monarchy with scandal.

Patron of the Arts

Without Caroline, George's reputation might well have been higher. He was warm-hearted and generous, and devoted to his often motherly mistresses. He was also a man of superb taste. England is in his debt for some of its most famous and beautiful architectural treasures. Regent Street and Regent's Park owe their beauty to him, and he rebuilt Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The beautiful classical portico of the National Gallery came from Carlton House, his residence as heir to the throne.

George made a magnificent collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings, and, as king, he persuaded his government to spend a fortune for a collection that formed the nucleus of the National Gallery. He filled his palaces with the finest examples of 18th-century French and contemporary English furniture. No British monarch, except possibly Charles I, ever added so much to the nation's cultural heritage. But George's tastes were expensive, and at a time when most of his subjects were experiencing extreme privation during the wars with France and their aftermath, his extravagance caused bitter resentment.

Regent and King

In 1811 his father became permanently insane, and George was declared prince regent. The Whigs, however, did not come to power with him, for the prince's relations with the Whigs had become increasingly strained since Fox's death in 1806. In 1812 George did make an attempt to bring some of the Whigs into a coalition ministry, but they would not accept a compromise. George had never been a Whig by conviction, and thereafter he settled comfortably with his father's Tory ministers and advisers. He, however, was never the strong political influence George III had been in his prime. The blunt Duke of Wellington, his last prime minister, called George and his brothers "the damnedest millstones about the neck of any Government that can be imagined."

In 1820, when he came to the throne on his father's death, George IV persuaded a reluctant government to undertake a divorce from his detested queen. This caused a national outcry, less because the Queen was loved than because George was hated, and the action had to be dropped. On occasion the King exerted his prerogatives, as when he chose George Canning over Wellington for prime minister in 1827, but in general George followed the advice of his ministers. He enjoyed his public role, and though old, overweight, and corseted, he played it with great dignity and a real sense of drama until he died, unlamented, on June 26, 1830.

Further Reading

Roger Fulford, George the Fourth (1935; rev. ed. 1949), is a fine modern biography. See also J. H. Plumb's delightful The First Four Georges (1956). R. J. White, Life in Regency England (1963), is recommended for general historical background.

Additional Sources

Foord-Kelcey, Jim., Mrs. Fitzherbert and sons, Sussex, England: Book Guild, 1991.

Hibbert, Christopher, George IV, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

Hibbert, Christopher, George IV: Prince of Wales, 1762-181, New York, Harper & Row 1974, 1972.

Hibbert, Christopher, George IV, regent and king, 1811-1830, New York: Harper & Row, 1975 1973.

Palmer, Alan Warwick, The life and times of George IV, London: Cardinal, 1975, 1972.

Richardson, Joanna, The disastrous marriage: a study of George IV and Caroline of Brunswick, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975, 1960. □

George IV 1762–1830, king of Great Britain and Ireland (1820–30), eldest son and successor of George III. In 1785 he married Maria Anne Fitzherbert , a Roman Catholic. The marriage was illegal, however; and in 1795, to secure parliamentary settlement of his enormous debts, he made a political marriage with Caroline of Brunswick . In constant and open opposition to his father, George associated closely with the Whigs, particularly Charles James Fox , whose friend he became in 1781. As a result, when George III had his first serious fit of insanity in 1788–89, the Tory William Pitt proposed that the regency vested in the prince be closely restricted (to prevent George bringing his Whig friends to power), while Fox, usually the opponent of royal prerogative, wanted the prince to have unlimited powers as regent. In 1811, after the king had become permanently incapacitated, George became regent on terms very similar to those proposed by Pitt in 1788. However, when the limitations on his power to make appointments and spend crown revenues were removed in 1812, the prince regent retained most of his father's ministers, breaking his connection with the Whigs. The Tories, under the leadership of the 2d earl of Liverpool for most of the period, remained entrenched in power throughout the regency and George's subsequent reign. As regent and as king, George was hated for his extravagance and dissolute habits, and he aroused particular hostility by an unsuccessful attempt, immediately after his accession (1820) to the throne, to divorce his long-estranged wife, Caroline. During his reign the monarchy lost a significant amount of power. George's only legitimate child, Charlotte Augusta, married (1816) Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (later Leopold I, king of the Belgians) but died in childbirth in 1817. George was succeeded by his brother William IV. See Regency .

Bibliography: See biographies by R. Fulford (rev. ed. 1949, repr. 1963) and C. Hibbert (2 vol., 1974–75); S. David, Prince of Pleasure (1999).

George IV (1762–1830) King of Great Britain and Ireland and of dependencies overseas, King of Hanover (1820–30). As regent (1811–20) and later king, he led a dissolute life and was largely responsible for the decline in power and prestige of the British monarchy in the early 19th century. The eldest son of GEORGE III, he cultivated the friendship of Charles James FOX and other Whigs. In 1785 he secretly and illegally married a Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837). Ten years later he reluctantly married Caroline of Brunswick, and separated from her immediately after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte. George III became increasingly senile at the end of 1810 and in the following year the prince was appointed regent. He gave his support to the Tories, but soon quarrelled with them too, leaving himself without a large personal following in Parliament. His reign saw the passage of the CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION Act (1829). His attempt to divorce Caroline for adultery in 1820 only increased his unpopularity. He was a leader of taste, fashion, and the arts, and gave his name to the REGENCY period. He was succeeded by his brother WILLIAM IV.

George IV (1762–1830), king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1820–30). As prince of Wales he had supported the Whig opposition and professed support for Catholic emancipation. By the time he became regent to the incapacitated George III in 1811 he had outgrown this early radicalism, and expectations of a new political era were quickly disappointed. His visit to Ireland (12 Aug.–3 Sept. 1821) nevertheless aroused enthusiasm among all classes, and O'Connell and other Catholic leaders offered extravagant displays of personal devotion. In the event it took political crisis, and all the efforts of Wellington and Peel, to extort the king's consent to the Catholic relief bill of 1829.

George IV (1762–1830) King of Great Britain and Ireland (1820–30). He served as Regent for his father, George III, from 1811. Self-indulgent and extravagant, government bored him but he was a strong patron of the arts. His marriage to Caroline of Brunswick (1795) was a source of scandal and he contracted a legally invalid marriage with Mrs Fitzherbert in 1785.

George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland. See Royal Collection.