{"id":32268,"date":"2024-01-08T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=102202"},"modified":"2024-01-09T07:12:55","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T06:12:55","slug":"the-two-sides-of-george-iv-is-his-wretched-reputation-deserved","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/the-two-sides-of-george-iv-is-his-wretched-reputation-deserved\/","title":{"rendered":"The two sides of George IV: is his wretched reputation deserved?"},"content":{"rendered":"

George IV was cultured, urbane and generous. Yet he trashed his reputation with his weakness for women, wine and spectacular self-indulgence. Two centuries after he became king, Stella Tillyard introduces the two, contrasting, sides of a little-lamented monarch <\/p>

By HistoryExtraAdmin\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 08 January 2024 at 09:00 AM<\/p>

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At the end of January 1820, Charles Greville, young man-about-town and future clerk to the Privy Council, was enjoying the good life at the Duke of Bedford\u2019s luxurious estate of Woburn in Bedfordshire. He \u201cshot the whole week\u201d, he recorded in his diary, \u201cand killed an immense quantity of game\u201d. The solemn news that demanded his close professional attention was more laconically reported. \u201cOn Sunday last, arrived the news of the king\u2019s death,\u201d he wrote, adding without comment: \u201cThe new king has been desperately ill. He had a bad cold at Brighton, for which he lost 80 ounces of blood; yet he afterwards had a severe oppression, amounting almost to suffocation, on his chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

So George III<\/a> was dead,<\/a> and the British crown passed to his son George IV, who, at only 57 years old, was almost too broken down to receive it. Greville was to spend many hours in the company of the new king, but he never came to like him. Ten years later, on 16 July, the day after George IV\u2019s funeral, Greville noted, as if he had never known him: \u201cNobody thinks any more of the late king than if he had been dead 50 years, unless it be to abuse him and to rake up all his vices and misdeeds.\u201d The august Times<\/em> newspaper ran a leader the same day declaring with relish that: \u201cThere never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king,\u201d and asked rhetorically: \u201cWhat eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? If George IV ever had a friend \u2013 a devoted friend \u2013 in any rank of life, we protest that the name of him or her has not yet reached us.\u201d<\/p>\n

George IV\u2019s reputation was thus poor when he acceded to the throne in 1820, poor when he vacated it in 1830, and has not really recovered since.<\/p>\n

‘There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures,’ opined the Times on the death of George IV <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

Part of the reason for this is the fact that he was held in low esteem both by his chief executor, the Duke of Wellington, and by his niece, Queen Victoria, who disapproved of his spendthrift ways, his morals and his laziness. The duke destroyed many of George IV\u2019s personal possessions and, presumably, as much of his private correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, that he could get hold of. As for Queen Victoria, she hung onto the best of his paintings, porcelain, silver and furniture, but sold off or junked what she didn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

Few of George\u2019s acts as king and, before that, regent (when George ruled as a proxy for his father, who had been declared irremediably mad) are remembered. In the absence of George\u2019s jottings and sketches, his plans for interiors and his vast and expensive wardrobe, his private world and emotions are difficult to reconstruct. And so it was left to Victoria<\/a>, and the age to which she gave her name, to fill the vacuum and seal George IV\u2019s terrible image in the eyes of the British people.<\/p>\n

Victoria, who acceded to the throne seven years after George\u2019s death (following the brief reign of William IV), set out to be everything her uncle was not: a successful and long-lasting monarch; a devoted spouse with a large brood. As if that wasn\u2019t enough to eclipse him, his father, George III, was another hardworking monarch (before he succumbed to mental illness<\/a>), faithfully married for 57 years and the father of 15 children.<\/p>\n