There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king.
The Times, on the death of George IV, July 1830
George IV
parents: George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
date and place of birth: 12 August 1762 at St James's Palace, London
wives: Maria Fitzherbert (secret marriage, invalid in law); Caroline of Brunswick
dates of marriage: 15 December 1785 (Fitzherbert); 8 April 1795 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace (Caroline)
children: Princess Charlotte of Wales
years as Prince Regent: 1811-1820
years of reign: 1820-1830
date of coronation: 19 July 1821 at Westminster Abbey
date and place of death: 26 June 1830 at Windsor Castle
place of burial: St George's Chapel, Windsor
George Augustus Frederick was the eldest of the fifteen children of George III and Queen Charlotte, and he became Prince of Wales a few days after he was born. His father, a frugal, pious family man, brought up his sons under a strict regime of lessons and plain food. The result, in George's case, was a young man who rebelled in every way he could. By his late teens he was drinking, gambling, chasing actresses and running up debts. He sided with his father's political enemies, above all Charles James Fox and the Whigs, and his house, Carlton House on Pall Mall, became the headquarters of the opposition.
He had real gifts. He was intelligent, witty and charming, spoke several languages, and had some of the best taste of any British monarch. He bought Rembrandts, Dutch interiors and paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds and Lawrence, many of which remain in the Royal Collection today. But his spending had no limits. By 1795 his debts stood at around £630,000, tens of millions in today's money.
Mrs Fitzherbert
In 1784 the prince fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow six years older than him. She refused to become his mistress. He stabbed himself, or at least staged a bloody scene, to persuade her, and on 15 December 1785 a clergyman, paid out of debtors' prison, married them in her drawing room in Mayfair. The marriage broke two laws. The Royal Marriages Act of 1772 made any marriage by a member of the royal family under twenty-five without the king's consent void, and the Act of Settlement barred anyone who married a Catholic from the throne. Since the marriage was invalid, it did not cost him the succession, but if it had been known it would have caused a scandal. When the rumour reached Parliament in 1787, Fox, on the prince's word, denied it in the Commons.
Caroline of Brunswick
By 1795 the prince's creditors could wait no longer, and Parliament would pay his debts only if he married properly and produced an heir. He agreed to marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick, without having met her. When she arrived in England and was presented to him, he embraced her, turned away and said to the diplomat who had escorted her, "Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy." He was drunk at the wedding on 8 April 1795 and, according to Caroline, spent the wedding night passed out in the fireplace. Their daughter, Charlotte, was born nine months later, and the couple lived apart from then on.
The Regency
George III suffered his last and worst attack of mental illness in late 1810. In February 1811 Parliament passed the Regency Act, and the Prince of Wales became Prince Regent, king in all but name. The Whigs expected him to bring them into office; instead he kept his father's Tory ministers, and the Whigs never forgave him. The Regency lasted until George III's death in 1820, and it gave its name to an era: the novels of Jane Austen, the poetry of Byron and Shelley, the high-waisted dresses and elegant stucco terraces of the period, and the dandy Beau Brummell, who dictated men's fashion until he and the prince fell out. When Brummell was cut by the Regent at a ball in 1813, he asked the prince's companion, loudly, "Who's your fat friend?"
The Regency also saw victory over Napoleon. Wellington drove the French out of Spain in the Peninsular War, and in June 1815 defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. George later claimed to have been at the battle, even to have led a charge. Wellington, when the king appealed to him to confirm it, replied, "I have heard you say so, sir." At home, the years after the war brought unemployment, high bread prices and protest. In 1817 a crowd threw stones at the Regent's carriage on his way back from opening Parliament, and in 1819 cavalry charged a peaceful meeting for parliamentary reform at St Peter's Field, Manchester, killing at least fifteen people. The press called it Peterloo.
In November 1817 Princess Charlotte, the prince's only child and the country's hope for the future, died after giving birth to a stillborn son. The nation went into mourning. You can read about her and her husband on our page on Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. Her death set off a race among her unmarried uncles to marry and produce an heir, which the Duke of Kent won with the birth of Victoria in 1819.
The Queen's Trial
George III died on 29 January 1820, and the Regent became George IV. Caroline, who had spent six years travelling around Europe with a household that included her Italian servant Bartolomeo Pergami, came home to claim her rights as queen. George wanted a divorce. His government brought a Bill of Pains and Penalties into the House of Lords to strip her of her title and dissolve the marriage on grounds of adultery with Pergami. The "trial" that followed, in the autumn of 1820, was a sensation. Servants gave evidence about beds, baths and bedrooms. The public, who disliked the king far more than they disliked his wife, took Caroline's side, and crowds cheered her in the streets. The bill passed its third reading in the Lords by only nine votes, and the government dropped it rather than face the Commons.
George was crowned on 19 July 1821 in the most expensive coronation in British history, costing around £240,000. Caroline went to Westminster Abbey to take part and was turned away at the door. She died less than three weeks later.
Brighton and Buckingham Palace
George's greatest monument stands by the sea. He first visited Brighton in 1783 and rented a farmhouse there, which the architect Henry Holland turned into a neoclassical villa. Between 1815 and 1822 John Nash transformed it into the Royal Pavilion, with onion domes and minarets outside and dragons, lotus chandeliers and Chinese wallpapers inside. Nash also laid out Regent's Park and Regent Street for him, and in 1825 began turning Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace. At Windsor, Jeffry Wyatville remodelled the castle into the Gothic silhouette it has today.
George also revived the idea of the monarch travelling to meet his people. In 1821 he visited Ireland and Hanover, and in August 1822 Scotland, the first reigning monarch to visit since Charles II. Sir Walter Scott stage-managed the visit as a pageant of Highland tartan, and the king appeared in a kilt, with pink tights underneath.
Last Years
As king, George had less influence than he had hoped. His prime ministers, Lord Liverpool, George Canning and then the Duke of Wellington, ran the government, and he grew fat, idle and reclusive, dependent on laudanum and cherry brandy. He opposed Catholic emancipation, which he said would break his coronation oath, but in 1829 Wellington and Peel told him the alternative was civil war in Ireland, and after threatening to abdicate, he gave his assent. He died at Windsor on 26 June 1830, aged sixty-seven. When his body was prepared for burial, the attendants found a miniature of Maria Fitzherbert around his neck, and he was buried wearing it. His brother succeeded him as William IV.
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