character. He did not disown them; they bore the name of Fitz Clarence, and as soon as he was able he provided liberally for them. Greville says that his sons, with one exception, repaid his kindness with insolence and ingratitude. His affection for them did not prevent his desertion of their mother. He separated from her without any apparent cause, and endeavored to bring about a marriage between himself and a half-crazy woman of large fortune. The Prince Regent is said to have been the main plot of this scheme, which was never carried out. During the earlier part of his connection with Mrs. Jordan, the Duke of Clarence made her an allowance of £1,000 a year. At the suggestion of George III. he is said to have proposed by letter to Mrs. Jordan to reduce this sum to £500. Her reply was to send him the bottom part of a play-bill, on which were these words, "No money returned after the rising of the curtain." When he was a young man on active service in the navy and in command of a ship, he had twice absented himself from foreign stations without leave, and the Admiralty were at their wits' end to know how to deal with him.
The death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817, and later the death of the Duke of York, gave political importance to the Duke of Clarence's existence, and he was one of the batch of Royal Dukes who married, as we have seen, in 1818, not without unseemly haggling with the House of Commons as to the additional allowance to be voted for his support. The £10,000 a year proposed by the Government was cut down to £6,000 by a vote of 193 to 184. Lord Castlereagh then rose and said that "Since the House had thought proper to refuse the larger sum to the Duke of Clarence, he believed he might say that the negotiation for the marriage might be considered at an end;" and on the
