The Prince Regent was a Toad
Miniature of King George IV painted by Richard Cosway, circa 1792
During the reign on King George III, the eldest of the fifteen children Queen Charlotte bore her husband would step into his father’s shoes to serve as Prince Regent while his mother cared for the ailing king. The period of the Regency lasted from 1811 until 1820, when the Prince of Wales was crowned George IV, ruling in his own right for another ten years.
While the title “Prince Regent” carries with it a regal charm, Prince George himself did not. He was nearly fifty when the regency began and a life of leisure and excess provided him with a ruddy complexion and an obese frame. He was given over nearly wholly to his own frivolity, drank heavily, spent lavishly, and enjoyed numerous mistresses throughout the entirety of his life.
He became infatuated in his early twenties with a young widow named Maria Fitzherbert whom he married in secret and subsequently impregnated numerous times. The marriage was invalid for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he had not bothered to ask for the King’s consent, and George was eventually forced by political pressure to deny the relationship publicly. Ever-mounting debts resulted in the Prince removing from Carlton House to reside with Maria Fitzherbert, but eventually his father convinced him to wed his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, in exchange for financial assistance.
The marriage lasted long enough only for Princess Caroline to bear him a daughter and they separated the following year when George returned to Maria Fitzherbert. Despite bearing no particular attachment to his daughter and legitimate heir, the Princess Charlotte, the Prince forbade Caroline from seeing her child as their discourse grew more strained and the girl grew up in her own establishment alone, meeting her mother only rarely. When Caroline proved herself to be equally notorious in comparison to her estranged husband, she was eventually encouraged to quit England altogether for the continent.
The Prince generally ignored his daughter, though he harbored some pride in her acknowledged wit and amiability, but his interest in her activities increased when he began to consider a political alliance for her. George tried to force her to wed William, the Prince of Orange, as his own political choice, but she broke off the initial engagement in favor of a marked preference for Leopold of Sax-Coburg-Saalfeld. George refused to countenance the match and confined the Princess to her residence, intending to keep her ostracized from all society until she relented to his will.
Princess Charlotte eventually won her father over and was allowed to marry Leopold, but her triumph was short-lived as she died in childbirth a little over a year after their wedding. Princess Caroline was abroad when her daughter passed and did not attend the funeral, but was reported to break down in anguish when she received the news.
By the time of his father’s death which marked the end of the Regency, the Prince was so generally disliked as a tyrant that he was unable to convince Parliament to allow him to divorce Caroline, the wife with whom he had not lived for twenty-four years. Instead, Caroline returned to England under great sympathy from the British people and attempted to attend George’s coronation, but was barred from entry and fell ill that same night, dying shortly afterward.
George was crowned King George IV in January of 1820 and ruled for ten more years until his death in 1830. With no remaining legitimate children, his throne passed to a younger brother, William, Duke of Clarence. Few, if any, mourned his passing and his legacy today is remembered as a one of selfish gluttony and extravagance.
