Monarchy

The humiliation of William IV and the triumph of reform

In June 1832, the House of Lords passed into law one of the most important bills in British history. The 'Great' Reform Act, which extended the franchise and got rid of certain election abuses, had survived 15 months of fervent debate, caused widespread rioting and a political crisis and led to an unprecedented single-issue election before making it on to the statute book.

The most humiliating document

To ensure the Act's passage, the king of the day, William IV, had had to put his name to the most humiliating document signed by a reigning monarch since the English Civil Wars. Faced with a parliamentary stalemate, in which the Tory-dominated House of Lords refused to pass the Reform Bill agreed by the overwhelmingly Whig-dominated House of Commons, William had been compelled to sign a letter promising to create 50 new Whig peers if the Tories did not back down.

William had categorically refused to do this less than a month previously. Until then, he had given his prime minister, Earl Grey, his backing for parliamentary reform on the grounds that it was the only practical alternative to revolution. Two years earlier, France had again risen up in revolt against its restored monarchy, and the huge demonstrations and reform riots in cities such as London, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol had suggested that the same might happen in Britain. But the king had set himself against the dilution of the power of the House of Lords by the creation of new peers.

The king backtracks

Grey – whose Whigs had only just won a landslide victory in an election fought on the existing franchise – resigned. On 9 May 1832, William invited the Tories, led by the implacably anti-reform duke of Wellington, to form a government. It was obvious that they could not do so, and in the face of growing unrest, the king was forced to backtrack quickly.

He tried, privately, to persuade the Tories to abstain in the House of Lords, thus getting them – and him – off the hook. But they continued to resist, and eventually Wellington had to admit that he could not form a government. The king was compelled to go back to Grey. His price for returning to government was a letter from William agreeing to the creation of new peers in order to force through reform if the Bill was rejected again. The king had no option but to sign.

When he told the Tories what he'd done, their resistance finally collapsed. Wellington suggested to the Tory peers that they either vote against reform or absent themselves from the chamber. Some 200 decided that discretion was the better form of valour and stayed away. On 7 June 1832, the Reform Act received the royal assent – although William, perhaps feeling himself to have been humiliated enough, refused Grey's request that he grant it in person.

Not so 'great'

The 'Great' Reform Act of 1832 was not as 'great' as its supporters desired or opponents feared. In reality, it was very limited in scope, although it did away with some of the worst abuses of the old system. In particular, it removed the 'pocket' or 'rotten' boroughs with tiny, unrepresentative electorates, where MPs were effectively hand-picked by large landowners. It extended the franchise lower down the social scale to any man with a household valued at £10 or more. And it created new seats for the increased populations of urban Britain and the newly industrialised north.

However, even after the reform, although it doubled the electorate to around 435,000 voters, only about one man in seven was entitled to vote. Women and the non-property-owning classes were excluded altogether. It would take almost another century before the franchise was extended to all adults.

But from now on the fight for the vote was to bypass the monarch altogether. William had been forced to concede, in no uncertain terms, that this was a matter to be resolved between Parliament and the people.

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