consequence of the exclusion of the princess from court during the visit of the allied sovereigns. In August in that year she left England, and after a little time took up her abode in Italy. The accession of George IV. brought matters to a crisis. He ordered that no prayer for his wife as queen should be admitted into the Prayer Book. She at once challenged the accusation which was implied in this omission by returning to England. On the 7th of June she arrived in London. Before she left the continent she had been informed that proceedings would be taken against her for adultery if she landed in England. Two years before, in 1818, commissioners had been sent to Milan to investigate charges against her, and their report, laid before the cabinet in 1819, was made the basis of the prosecution. On the day on which she arrived in London a message was laid before both Houses recommending the criminating evidence to parliament. A secret committee in the House of Lords after considering this evidence brought in a report on which the prime minister founded a Bill of Pains and Penalties to divorce the queen and to deprive her of her royal title. The bill passed the three readings with diminished majorities, and when on the third reading it obtained only a majority of nine, it was abandoned by the Government. The king’s unpopularity, great as it had been before, was now greater than ever. Public opinion, without troubling itself to ask whether the queen was guilty or not, was roused to indignation by the spectacle of such a charge being brought by a husband who had thrust away his wife to fight the battle of life alone, without protection or support, and who, whilst surrounding her with spies to detect, perhaps to invent, her acts of infidelity, was himself notorious for his adulterous life. In the following year (1821) she attempted to force her way into Westminster Abbey to take her place at the coronation. On this occasion the popular support failed her; and her death in August relieved the king from further annoyance.
Immediately after the death of the queen, the king set out for Ireland. He remained there but a short time, and his effusive declaration that rank, station, honours were nothing compared with the exalted happiness of living in the hearts of his Irish subjects gained him a momentary popularity which was beyond his attainment in a country where he was better known. His reception in Dublin encouraged him to attempt a visit to Edinburgh in the following year (August 1822). Since Charles II. had come to play the sorry part of a covenanting king in 1650 no sovereign of the country had set foot on Scottish soil. Sir Walter Scott took the leading part in organizing his reception. The enthusiasm with which he was received equalled, if it did not surpass, the enthusiasm with which he had been received in Dublin. But the qualities which enabled him to fix the fleeting sympathies of the moment were not such as would enable him to exercise the influence in the government which had been indubitably possessed by his father. He returned from Edinburgh to face the question of the appointment of a secretary of state which had been raised by the death of Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh). It was upon the question of the appointment of ministers that the battle between the Whigs and the king had been fought in the reign of George III. George IV. had neither the firmness nor the moral weight to hold the reins which his father had grasped. He disliked Canning for having taken his wife’s side very much as his father had disliked Fox for taking his own. But Lord Liverpool insisted on Canning’s admission to office, and the king gave way. Tacitly and without a struggle the constitutional victory of the last reign was surrendered. But it was not surrendered to the same foe as that from which it had been won. The coalition ministry in 1784 rested on the great landowners and the proprietors of rotten boroughs. Lord Liverpool’s ministry had hitherto not been very enlightened, and it supported itself to a great extent upon a narrow constituency. But it did appeal to public opinion in a way that the coalition did not, and what it wanted itself in popular support would be supplied by its successors. What one king had gained from a clique another gave up to the nation. Once more, on Lord Liverpool’s death in 1827, the same question was tried with the same result. The king not only disliked Canning personally, but he was opposed to Canning’s policy. Yet after some hesitation he accepted Canning as prime minister; and when, after Canning’s death and the short ministry of Lord Goderich, the king in 1828 authorized the duke of Wellington to form a ministry, he was content to lay down the principle that the members of it were not expected to be unanimous on the Catholic question. When in 1829 the Wellington ministry unexpectedly proposed to introduce a Bill to remove the disabilities of the Catholics, he feebly strove against the proposal and quickly withdrew his opposition. The worn-out debauchee had neither the merit of acquiescing in the change nor the courage to resist it.
George IV. died on the 26th of June 1830, and was succeeded by his brother, the duke of Clarence, as William IV. His only child by Queen Caroline, the princess Charlotte Augusta, was married in 1816 to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, afterwards king of the Belgians, and died in childbirth on the 6th of November 1817.
George IV. was a bad king, and his reign did much to disgust the country with the Georgian type of monarchy; but libertine and profligate as he became, the abuse which has been lavished on his personal character has hardly taken into sufficient consideration the loose morals of contemporary society, the political position of the Whig party, and his own ebullient temperament. Thackeray, in his Four Georges, is frequently unfair in this respect. The just condemnation of the moralist and satirist requires some qualification in the light of the picture of the period handed down in the memoirs and diaries of the time, such as Greville’s, Croker’s, Creevey’s, Lord Holland’s, Lord Malmesbury’s, &c. Among later works see The First Gentleman of Europe, by Lewis Melville (1906), a book for the general reader. (S. R. G.; H. Ch.)
GEORGE V. [George Frederick Ernest Albert], king of
Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond
the Seas, emperor of India (1865–), second son of King
Edward VII., was born at Marlborough House, London, on the
3rd of June 1865. When four years old, he and his elder brother,
Prince Albert Victor, two years his senior, were placed under
the tutorship of John Neale Dalton, then curate of Sandringham.
In 1877 the two princes became naval cadets on the
“Britannia” at Spithead, where they passed through the
ordinary curriculum, and in 1879 they joined H.M.S. “Bacchante”
under the command of Captain Lord Charles Scott,
making a voyage to the West Indies, in the course of which
they were rated midshipmen. After a month at home in 1880
they returned to the ship to make another prolonged cruise in
H.M.S. “Bacchante,” in the course of which they visited South
America, South Africa, Australia, the Fiji Islands, Japan, Ceylon,
Egypt, Palestine and Greece. A narrative of this voyage,
The Cruise of H.M.S. “Bacchante,” compiled from the letters,
diaries and notebooks of the princes, was published in 1886.
At the close of this tour in 1882 the brothers separated. Prince
George, who remained in the naval service, was appointed to
H.M.S. “Canada,” commanded by Captain Durrant, on the
North American and West Indian station, and was promoted
sub-lieutenant. On his return home he passed through the
Royal Naval College at Greenwich and the gunnery and torpedo
schools, being promoted lieutenant in 1885. A year later he
was appointed to H.M.S. “Thunderer” of the Mediterranean
squadron, and was subsequently transferred to H.M.S. “Dreadnought”
and H.M.S. “Alexandra.” In 1889 he joined the
flagship of the Channel squadron, H.M.S. “Northumberland,”
and in that year was in command of torpedo boat No. 79 for
the naval manœuvres. In 1890 he was put in command of
the gunboat H.M.S. “Thrush” for service on the North American
and West Indian station. After his promotion as commander
in 1891 he commissioned H.M.S. “Melampus,” the command
of which he relinquished on the death of his brother, Albert
Victor, the duke of Clarence, in January 1892, since his duties
as eventual heir to the crown precluded him from devoting
himself exclusively to the navy. He was promoted captain
in 1893, rear-admiral in 1901, and vice-admiral in 1903. He
was created duke of York, earl of Inverness, and Baron Killarney
in 1892, and on the 6th of July 1893 he married Princess Victoria
Mary (b. 26th May 1867), daughter of Francis, duke of Teck,
