Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (17 page)

O
ne of the most extraordinary periods in the history of English royalty was the era known as the Regency. It occurred when King George III was absent from rule because of prolonged illness between 1811 and 1820. Power was handed to his son as Prince Regent.

Famous for his extravagant lifestyle, the Prince of Wales started out as a popular man. Tall, handsome, witty and intelligent, he became known as ‘the first gentleman of Europe’.

His flamboyance and scandalous life outside court, however, drew more disdain than pride from his disciplined father. The Prince reacted by openly rebelling against the King, delighting in the embarrassment this might cause him. Once, in 1783, the Prince appeared at the state opening of Parliament dressed in:

The good times, however, could not last without repercussions. The excesses of a lifesytle of gay abandon took their toll and his body grew inexorably to gigantic proportions. Unfortunately for the Prince of Wales, he lived in an age of political and artistic freedom, and became the natural target of cartoonists who could not resist such a brilliant opportunity to exercise their acerbic talents. Cruickshank referred to him as the ‘Prince of Whales’; Gillray entitled a disgusting cartoon, ‘A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion’. The cruel mockery culminated in one of his critics, Leigh Hunt, being imprisoned for two years for seditious libel.

In a running battle with his father, the Prince did everything in his power to upset him, including his choice of marriage partner. George III had not long reaffirmed state policy in the Royal Marriages Act stipulating all royal wives be Protestant, when his son presented his wife, whom he had married in secret. She was Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, a commoner, twice widowed – and Roman Catholic.

Furthermore, the Prince refused to spend within the budget agreed by the government. His racing activities alone cost £30,000 a year. The enormity of his debts, which escalated to £640,000, caused great embarrassment at a time when the nation’s coffers were already depleted by the Napoleonic Wars.

A strategy was hatched by Prime Minister William Pitt. In return for scrapping his debt, the Prince should wed again (the first marriage being deemed illegal). This time it would be to an attractive, fashionable young woman of impeccable pedigree, his German cousin Princess Caroline.

But the Prince was not happy. Commissioners were appointed to watch over his expenditure in every detail. As the commentator William Cobbett remarked, ‘The prince was placed under a guardianship and control as severe as if he had still been an infant, or something even lower in the scale of intellectual capacity.’

On top of this, he did not like his new wife, who turned out to be as spendthrift as her husband. The ploy backfired. The couple separated, but the Prince’s parties continued as riotously as ever, probably as much to irritate his poor father as for any desire for pleasure.

Curiously, once his father was forced to relinquish power of rule and the Regency set up in 1811, the Prince’s outlook began to change. As nominal head of state, he now felt too grown up – at nearly 50 – to continue in the role of
enfant terrible.
Instead, the Prince Regent directed his energies into art and architecture.

From his partnership with a dashing designer in John Nash came forth a new style of architecture now known as Regency. He channelled his flair for flamboyance and frippery into buildings, notably the onion-domed Royal Pavilion in Brighton. With Nash they redesigned great swathes of the West End of London, creating Regent Street and Regent’s Park, with its ‘wedding-cake’ terraces. They also remodelled Buckingham Palace.

However, by the time the Prince Regent was crowned king, as George IV in 1820, he was a spent force. The heady lifestyle of his past was over and he withdrew into isolation at Windsor.

Sick and troubled by insomnia, the new King doused himself with large doses of cherry brandy and laudanum to soothe his gout. When George died in 1830 Britain was to lose one of the most controversial kings in its history. As
The Times
newspaper recorded, ‘There was never an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king.’

T
he third son of George III was not expected to become king and so was not trained for monarchy. At the age of 13 he was sent to sea and there he acquired a nautical directness and taste for strong language. He was known for being tactless and earned the original nickname ‘Silly Billy’.

William had spent most of his life as a private man, with none of the indulgence his elder brother George IV enjoyed. He lived quietly with his mistress and actress who mothered their ten illegitimate children. When his other elder brother, Frederick (the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’) died, and George IV’s only child Charlotte had died in childbirth, William suddenly found himself next in line to the throne.

Furthermore, the present king, George IV, was seriously ailing. William had three years to prepare to receive the crown but was certainly chuffed at the idea. He is said to have spent months practising his royal signature, ‘William R’.

Although 64 when he did accede, William was in good shape. Being essentially good-natured and compliant, his reign was mostly uneventful. In agreeing to all the government proposals put to him over the Reform Bill of 1832, the King was said by Prime Minister Earl Grey to have behaved ‘like an angel’.

William’s common-sense attitude to most things helped raise the public estimation of the monarchy. If nothing else, he had rescued it from the depths of scandal to which his brother had plunged it.

Q
ueen Victoria’s vital statistics are: married 21 years, widowed 40 years, reigned 64 years; lived 82 years. The longest reigning monarch England has ever had may also have been the most emotionally troubled. An unhappy childhood, stifling mother and inconsolable bereavement at the loss of Prince Albert undermined the confidence of this most austere Empress of India.

Intimate pictures of Victoria and Albert bely the power struggle between them

Despite her strong sense of sovereignty, in which she alone was ruler of this nation and empire, Victoria always needed a man at her side for support. And it had to be a beautiful one at that. Lord Melbourne was her prime minister in the early days of her reign. In this witty and charming politician she found the kindly advice and almost flirtatious attention that pleased her.

Victoria was constantly in need of reassurance. A deep insecurity stemmed from her earliest days. Her father, Duke of Kent, died when she was just eight months old, and her mother, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, believed that Victoria should be shut away from the world and kept under the strictest supervision. She was not even allowed downstairs at home in Kensington Palace without the governess holding her hand.

The strict code of morality and manners that were to be the hallmark of Victoria’s later character were inculcated in this stifling domestic atmosphere. When at table as a young girl, she had to sit with a holly leaf between ruff and chin to keep her face respectfully upright.

Victoria’s loathing for her mother did not vent itself until the day she became queen. Alone after the coronation ceremony, she turned to her and asked, ‘And now, Mamma, am I really and truly queen?’ Her mother affirmed that she was. ‘Then, dear Mamma,’ Victoria continued, ‘I hope you will grant me the first request I make to you as queen. Let me be by myself for an hour.’ This snub was probably as much as her daughter could muster at the time, but it reveals a deep resentment. |

Offering comfort and flattery, Lord Melbourne was able to help Victoria overcome her self-doubts and nervousness, easing the transition from Princess to Queen. But despite the elevation in her status, Victoria continued to suffer from the suffocating relationship with her mother, a ‘dreadful state’ she confessed, and one that could only be remedied by marriage.

An initial determination not to marry altered on meeting her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Soon after their second encounter, three years later, Victoria was apparently smitten by Albert’s lean masculine beauty. She wasted no time and proposed to him, as was her prerogative.

Though uncomfortable in English surroundings, Albert vowed ‘to train myself to be a good and useful man’. Scholarly and diligent, he was more at home with books than people; his shyness and inability to master the English language did nothing to help his confidence either.

And what exactly of their love? Their wedding night ended with an early morning walk, hardly the endorsement of a flourishing passion. The Queen is said to have adored Albert, yet he showed none of the signs of requiting that love.

In reality he suffered miserably from her dominance – she had insisted on keeping the word ‘obey’ in his marriage vow – and was refused any real power in state affairs. The business of ruling was hers alone. She allowed him to blot her papers for her, as a concession, but did not make him consort until 1857 when the last of their nine children was born – and only then when she realised that her son Edward, in whom both parents were disappointed, would otherwise succeed to the throne.

The frustration Albert felt is apparent from his diary. Once he wrote of his difficulties: ‘She will not hear me out but flies into a rage and overwhelms me with reproaches of suspiciousness, want of trust, envy, etc.’ This does not sound like a loving relationship.

With her increasing confinement for child-bearing, Victoria came to cede more and more power to Albert, causing a curious reversal of roles. She became submissive and withdrawn, he overbearing, coldly rational and unforgiving of her frequent outbursts. Victoria suffered from depression, Albert from emotional isolation.

Having finally yielded so much to her supportive husband, on whom she came to depend utterly, Victoria was devastated by his death from typhoid fever in 1861.

The Queen wore widow’s weeds for the remaining 40 years of her life. She refused to have her room changed in the slightest detail, except for the fresh flowers she strewed over his bed every day. Even five years after his death, Victoria excused herself from opening Parliament because she did not wish to be the ‘spectacle of a poor, broken-hearted widow, nervous and shrinking, dragged in deep mourning.’

Alas one more man would come into her life, in the unexpected form of John Brown, a no-nonsense Scottish Highlander who referred to her as ‘wumman’. He too became her prop, which she needed now more than ever before. Nobody was allowed to speak to her, except through Brown as her intermediary. Such was her dependence that she even tolerated his heavy bouts of whisky drinking.