Monarchy

William IV

On 26 June 1830, George IV was succeeded by his eldest surviving brother, Prince William Henry, duke of Clarence, third son of George III. At first sight, William, who was already aged 64, was not a promising prospect as king.

After early service in the Royal Navy, to which he had been packed off at the age of only 13 (he would later be known as the 'Sailor King'), he had spent most of his life as a relatively impecunious younger son. He was also personally ridiculous, with a strange, pineapple-shaped head and a tendency to talk at length and at some distance from the point.

He could be stubborn and difficult and determined to go his own way. For instance, to force his father to make him a duke like his elder brothers, he threatened to run for Parliament for the constituency of Totnes in Devon. The king agreed to his demands.

However, William kept up the family tradition (abandoned by his father) of keeping a mistress. His liaison with the actress Dorothea Bland, better known by her stage name of Mrs Jordan, would last 20 years and produce 10 illegitimate children. In 1818, seven years after they parted, he married Princess Adelaide, the daughter of the duke of Saxe-Meiningen, who was half his age. They had two daughters, both of whom died as babies.

Perhaps because of his somewhat non-standard youth (for a royal), William was politically moderate, in contrast to the rabid Toryism of other members of the royal family. His naval service had also given him both a common touch as well as robust common sense. He was also – in striking contrast to his predecessor – completely indifferent, even hostile, to pomp and circumstance.

Clarence House, which stands beside St James's Palace, was the elegant but comparatively modest London residence built for William while he was still heir to the throne. But he continued to live there after his accession and showed no desire to move into the neighbouring Buckingham Palace, George IV's last and grandest building project. Impatient on one occasion at the delays in getting the state coach ready for the dissolution of Parliament, William threatened to go instead in a hackney coach, the ancestor of the modern taxi!

Barely a month after his accession in 1830, William got a brutal reminder of the fate of unsuccessful sovereigns. Paris rose in the 'Days of July' and the king of France, Charles X, was ignominiously driven from his throne. Just how secure was William's throne? Despite 40-odd years of almost uninterrupted Tory rule, ideas from France in 1789 had taken root in Britain. But was it to be revolution or reform?

Many thought that change could be brought about within Britain's existing institutions, and by peaceful means, not revolutionary violence. Then, in 1819, came the Peterloo Massacre, when a demonstration in Manchester went wrong and 11 were killed and more than 400 injured. The striking thing about it was that the target of the agitation had not been the monarchy, as it would later be in France and had been in 17th-century England, but Parliament.

It was William's misfortune that the pressure for parliamentary reform suddenly intensified at the beginning of his reign. Five months after his accession, the Tory government fell and a Whig administration took office for the first time in almost 50 years. Over the next three years, three Reform Bills were submitted to Parliament. The first two were defeated, and it looked as though the intransigent Tory majority in the Lords would do the same to the third.

To break the deadlock, the Whigs wanted William to create enough peers to give them a majority in the Lords as well. But for the king this was a step too far and he refused. The prime minister Earl Grey resigned, and on 9 May 1832, William invited the Tories to form a government. They resisted as long as possible, but finally had to admit that they couldn't. The king now had no choice but to recall Grey and agree to his demand for the mass creation of peers.

William informed the Tory leaders of what he had done. Certain that they would be swamped in the Lords, they abandoned their resistance, and on the 7 June 1832, the Reform Act received the royal assent.

William IV did not long survive the Reform Act. Now in his late 60s, his health was declining and his tetchiness increasing. He was kept going only by his determination to live long enough to make sure that his detested sister-in-law, the duchess of Kent, did not become regent for her young daughter Victoria who, because of William's failure to father a legitimate child, was heir presumptive to the throne.

William made it with days to spare. Victoria celebrated her 18th birthday – her royal coming of age – on 24 May 1837, and William, his goal achieved, died less than a month later on 20 June.

His death also ended the union of the crowns of Britain and Hanover that had existed since the Hanoverian dynasty had taken over the British monarchy in 1714. Because a woman could not rule Hanover, the crown there went instead to William's younger brother, the duke of Cumberland.

William IV (1830–37)
http://britannia.com/history/monarchs/mo
n57.html
Brief biography of the third son of George III.

Clarence House
St James's Palace
London SW1 1BA
Tel: 020 7766 7303
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Website: www.royal.gov.uk/output/ page2262.asp
Clarence House was built between 1825 and 1827 to the designs of John Nash for Prince William Henry, duke of Clarence. He lived there as King William IV from 1830 until 1837. From 1953 to 2002, it was the home of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, and today it is the official residence of the prince of Wales and the duchess of Cornwall and the home of the princes William and Henry. It is open to the public in the summer.

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