to the popular belief that the duke had been living on her earnings; that she kept him, not he her. This appears incorrect, but the matter was and still is veiled in mystery. It was, however, admitted that want of money led to the separation. There was no quarrel; and, indeed, Mrs. Jordan's letters refer to the duke as generous and affectionate, but obliged, much against his will, to leave her. It was said that he intended to marry an heiress—any heiress; two were particularly named; and his supposed rejection by them formed the subject of numerous ballads, more or less scurrilous, by ‘Peter Pindar’ and others.
But it was only when some scandalmongers could make capital out of the duke's errors or eccentricities that he appeared as a public character. In the beginning of the war he earnestly desired to serve afloat, if only as a volunteer; but his applications for employment were ignored or refused. Later on he resided pretty constantly at Bushey ‘and brought up his numerous children with very tender affection; with them, and for them, he seemed entirely to live’ (Greville, iv. 2). He is said also to have been well read in naval history, even in minute details (Barrow, Life of Anson, pp. iii–iv), and his correspondence with naval officers—Nelson more especially—is a proof that he continued to take very great interest in the navy, and followed the course of events with attention. These letters tell of professional intelligence, but on other matters his incapacity was often painfully apparent, the more so as then and throughout his life he had a mania for making speeches without any regard to the fitness of things; as when in 1800–1 he delivered a course of lectures on the wickedness of adultery to the House of Lords; and in presence of his elder brothers, described an adulterer as ‘an insidious and designing villain, who would ever be held in disgrace and abhorrence by an enlightened and civilised society’ (Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv.). There was, indeed, very often a rude commonsense in his remarks; but the rambling manner in which they were tacked together and uttered made them sound like foolishness; and the total disregard of times and seasons and the feelings or prejudices of his hearers excited an antagonism which took its revenge in nicknaming him ‘Silly Billy.’
In such circumstances his promotions in the navy were little more than nominal. He was made a vice-admiral on 12 April 1794; an admiral on 14 April 1799; and, on the death of Sir Peter Parker (1721–1811) [q. v.], admiral of the fleet on 24 Dec. 1811. This last promotion, though to the Duke of Clarence little more than an empty honour, was a material wrong to his brother officers; for the rule was then, as it always had been, that there could be only one admiral of the fleet, or, as he was called in his commission, commander-in-chief; so that, the post being filled by the duke, it could not reward the services of any other admiral. It was not till 1821 that George IV remedied the grievance by introducing the apparent anomaly of two commanders-in-chief, and promoted the Earl of St. Vincent. As admiral of the fleet, however, the Duke of Clarence, with his flag on board the Jason frigate, commanded the escort of Louis XVIII on his return to France in April 1814; and in June, with his flag in the Impregnable, commanded the fleet at Spithead when reviewed by the prince regent and the allied sovereigns.
The death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817, the flutter among the king's younger sons, and the duke's marriage on 18 July 1818 to Adelaide, eldest daughter of George, duke of Saxe-Coburg Meiningen [see Adelaide, Queen Dowager], brought him momentarily before the public eye. The year after his marriage he spent in Hanover; but in 1820 he returned to Bushey, where he continued to reside in social obscurity till the death of the Duke of York in January 1827, which left him heir to the throne (the joint income of the duke and duchess, which had hitherto been 26,500l., was after considerable opposition raised by parliament to 38,500l.), and his acceptance in April of the office of lord high admiral in the Canning administration again brought him into notice.
In making this appointment there was no intention to revert to the government of the navy by one man, vested with all the power and prerogatives attached to the office of lord high admiral, and this was clearly stated in the patent. The Duke of Clarence, with no individual authority apart from his ‘council,’ was to be virtually first lord of the admiralty, under a different name, and with an exceptionally strong board, now called the ‘duke's council,’ at the head of which was Sir George Cockburn. It was supposed that the duke, who had not been in active service for nearly forty years—years, too, of great events and changes—would readily acquiesce in this arrangement, but this he absolutely refused to do, just as when a young captain he had refused to be dry-nursed by an old lieutenant. He wished to be lord high admiral in fact as well as in name, with the result that between him and his council there were continual differences
