The king announced almost publicly his desire that the ministry might be defeated, and their bill was lost in the house of lords. The memorable ministerial contest ending in the triumph of the younger Pitt followed. There was an overwhelming majority against the ministry in the house of commons; vote after vote was passed condemning it in the strongest terms; and the attempt to continue it was deemed both ludicrous and dangerous. Parliament was at length dissolved, and then it was no longer a battle between the royal prerogative and the house of commons. The cause of the king and his young minister became eminently popular, and a triumphant majority was returned in favour of the crown.
Again, after a considerable interval, the self-will of George III. became conspicuous in a great public question. He had adopted the notion that the oath established at the Revolution, by which the king bound himself to do nothing against the protestant religion, was not merely a restraint on the abuse of the royal prerogative, but a promise not to consent to any parliamentary measure in favour of the Roman catholics. Accordingly, when the ministry of 1806 brought in a Roman catholic relief bill, he intimated that he could not, in terms of his oath, give the royal assent to it, and the ministry resigned.
It remains only slightly to allude to some personal matters of a painful kind. In 1788 a mad woman named Margaret Nicholson attempted to kill him by stabbing with a knife, and was nearly successful. His conduct on the occasion, as described by Miss Burney, was marked by courage and humanity. Early in his reign he had shown a slight symptom of mental aberration, and in 1788 the disease returned with so much violence and apparent permanence that the measures for the appointment of a regency to be mentioned under the next article had to be seriously discussed. They were terminated by the king's recovery in the ensuing March, and the event was celebrated throughout the country with a kind of delirious joy. The conduct of his son clouded his latter days; and after some brief and casual returns, his malady settled down on him permanently in 1810, and accompanied with blindness, continued till his death on 29th January, 1820.—J. H. B—n.
George IV. (George Augustus Frederick), King of Great Britain and Ireland, and elector of Hanover, the eldest son of George III., was born on the 12th of August, 1762. The day of his birth was one of great rejoicing, not only for that event, but for another which the populace naturally associated with it as a favourable omen. The spoil of the Hermioné, the richest prize taken in the great war of the preceding reign, the value of which was estimated at not much less than a million sterling, was conveyed on that day in solemn procession through London to the Tower. Five days after his birth he was inaugurated as prince of Wales. When he was in his ninth year a staff of officers was appointed for his training and instruction, with Lord Holderness as governor at its head, and Dr. Markham, afterwards archbishop of York, as his preceptor. After five years this staff resigned in a body for some reason which has remained a mystery, though many conjectures about it were naturally circulated at the time. Lord Aylesbury and the duke of Montague became afterwards in succession his governors, and Hurd, bishop of Lichfield, his preceptor. He was brought up in great seclusion and a rigid observance of morality, while all available efforts were made to awaken within him a true sense of the obligations of religion. The character of his parents would have been at any time a guarantee that these essentials of good upbringing were not neglected. But it was remarked at the time, almost to the extent of remonstrance, and was significantly alluded to afterwards, that the extreme vigilance with which the young prince was secluded from all contact with the world and knowledge of its ways was unnatural, and a dangerous training to one who would have so much power, and would be subject to so many temptations. In fact, he was no sooner able to emancipate himself to any extent, and act the man, than the whole country rang with the scandal of his gallantries, greatly to the grief of his well-meaning parents. Among many female names early associated with his, the first that was possessed of any other distinction was Mrs. Robinson, an actress of great celebrity and a novelist, whose works were once read with interest. Her personal character rendered any sort of connection with the prince a great distinction, and she published her own version of their intercourse in her memoirs. Ideas about the morals and decorum of a British court have so utterly changed in later years, that as an excuse for alluding to such matters it is necessary to say, that they are not only an important and undoubted feature in the personal history of Prince George, but that they unfortunately exercised a great influence on the politics of the day, and the course of European history. Passing over the other affairs with this general remark, it is necessary to make special allusion to one which was far more important, and at the same time far more respectable than any of the others. For a year or two previous to 1786 rumours were arising and growing into shape in the public mind about the connection of the heir-apparent to the throne with a certain Mrs. Fitzherbert. She has been described by indifferent persons, who had no motive for praising her, as endowed with singular beauty, such as arrested the attention of all casual passers by; as dignified in her deportment, and possessed of fascinating colloquial powers. What was still more remarkable, she was deemed a person of pure fame, notwithstanding the dubieties attending her position towards the prince, and she was held in respect, even by the older members of the royal family. She had no original rank to entitle her to such consideration. She was the daughter of a country gentleman named Smith, and while still in the bloom of youth, after losing a prior husband, was the widow of Colonel Fitzherbert. There is no doubt that the prince was long warmly attached to her. She was a Roman catholic. To have married her would not only have been a violation of the royal marriage act—for there was no chance of his obtaining the necessary license from the king—but would have altogether disturbed the parliamentary settlement of the crown on the house of Hanover. The prince, however, spoke to his familiars in the tone of one who would sacrifice all rather than the object of his affections, and said he would resign his pretensions to the crown, and go abroad with a small competency, rather than part with her. His friends were afraid of his committing some imprudence fatal to his prospects and theirs. But the affair was taken up by the public, and it was whispered everywhere that the heir-apparent of the protestant line had privately married an obscure papist. So strong was the impression of a marriage ceremony having taken place, that in the discussion in parliament in April, 1787, on the prince's debts, it was referred to even by Pitt. It was then that Fox got up and—referring to "that miserable calumny, that low, malicious falsehood which had been propagated without doors, and made the wanton sport of the vulgar"—said that "His royal highness had authorized him to declare that as a peer of parliament he was ready in the other house to submit to any of the most pointed questions, and to afford his majesty, or his majesty's ministers, the fullest assurance of the utter falsehood of the statement in question, which never had, and which common sense must see never could have happened." Mrs. Fitzherbert expressed strong indignation against Fox for this statement, and it was with extreme difficulty that she could be kept from publicly contradicting it. That it was not justified, became afterwards known to Fox's friends; and his nephew. Lord Holland, in his History of the Whig Party, says, "In truth, that there was such a ceremony is now (I transcribe my narrative in 1836) not matter of conjecture or inference, but of history. Documents proving it (long in the possession of Mrs. Fitzherbert's family) have been since June, 1833, actually deposited by agreement between the executors of George IV. (the duke of Wellington and Sir William Knighton) and the nominees of Mrs. Fitzherbert (Lord Albemarle and Lord Staunton) at Coutts' bank in a sealed box." To justify the step which his great relative had taken. Lord Holland prints two letters. The one is a long earnest eloquent remonstrance by Fox, describing to the prince the ruinous consequences of such a union, and urging among other considerations that a marriage with a Roman catholic throws the prince contracting it out of the succession to the crown. To this the prince wrote an answer with his usual easy seductive grace, beginning—"My dear Charles;" thanking him for this testimony of the regard and affection which it is not only his wish but the ambition of his life to merit; and continuing, "Make yourself easy, my dear friend. Believe me the world will now soon be convinced that there not only is not, but never was, any grounds for these reports which of late have been so maliciously circulated. I have not seen you since the apostacy of Eden," &c. This refers to Sir Frederick Eden having left the whig party, and the prince goes on from that to enlarge on the necessity of all his friends keeping close together. It is remarkable of this letter, which is carefully dated "Carlton house,
