History 330:  British History

Introducing:  

THE REGENCY (1811-1820),

THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV (1820 – 1830)

&

GEORGE (“BEAU”) BRUMMEL (1778-1840)  

The Madness of King George.  

In 1811, old King George III went mad.  

Born in 1738, George had been king since 1760;  when he went mad, he had been king of Great Britain and Ireland for 51 years.  He had been king during the great victories of the French & Indian War; he had been king during the disaster of the American Revolution;  he had been king during the long, heroic struggle against Napoleon.  

But in 1811, at the age of 73, George went insane.  

His behavior at first seemed just odd – he’d burst into song at the strangest times, and then start shrieking.  He’d be terrified one moment, and then violent the next.  He had had spells of all this off and on for most of his long life, but by 1811, he was quite made.  Doctors today guess that he suffered from porphyria, a chronic chemical imbalance caused by kidney dysfunction.  In George’s days, though, doctors had no idea how to treat it, and the treatments they prescribed – bleeding with leaches, solitary confinement, whippings, plunges into freezing water – no doubt made things worse. (Be sure to see the film version of Alan Bennett’s play, The Madness of King George, staring Nigel Hawthorne as King George).   

So – what could be done?  

The King’s advisors decided not to remove George III – they were afraid that with a war still on, the removal of a mad king might well be more than the nation could stand.  

Instead, they set up a REGENCY, with the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, ruling in his father’s name.    

George IV (1762-1830).  

King George III and his wife, Charlotte, had 15 children.  George and Charlotte were actually a loving and conscientious parents, but they tended to be extremely strict and even domineering, and perhaps that’s way many of their children turned out rebellious and unhappy.   

King George III had an awful relationship with is son and heir, George Jr.  They fought incessantly.  The more King George insisted on discipline! the more young George raced after the wild life.  

Bright and cultured, George was also lazy, self-indulgent, cunning, and arrogant.  He was the center of a circle of dandies, led by Beau Brummell – all rich and perfect young men who yearned to be as snobbish, arrogant, and self-indulgent as George.  

When he was twenty-three, George became involved with MARIA SMYTHE FITZHERBERT (1756-1837).  Born into a middling class Catholic family, Maria was twice widowed as a young woman.  In London, she was part of the elite social circle.  She and George met and fell in love.  They were secretly married in a Catholic service in 1785.    

Secretly married because the Act of Settlement of 1701 said that no monarch of Great Britain could marry a Catholic, and the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 said that no member of the royal family could marry without the monarch’s explicit consent.  

Rumors, of course, swept all through the country about Prince George’s suspected marriage to Maria Fitzherbert – “Mrs. Fitzherbert.”  King George was enraged.  Prince George denied that he was married.  In 1787, the great Whig politician CHARLES JAMES FOX denied on the floor of Parliament that Prince George was married – an act which eventually led to Fox’s humiliation.  

In 1795, Prince George married CAROLINE of Brunswick.  Yes, it was a messy business – the Prince’s advisors insisted that his so-called marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert was illegal;  Prince George had rather tired of Mrs. Fitzherbert anyway, but could hardly get a divorce from her; anyway, it was time for a state marriage.  

Unfortunately, Prince George and Princess Caroline did not exactly get along, in fact, they began living separately in 1796, the year after their marriage.  Their marriage was a scandalous joke.  George quite openly conducted a series of affairs with other high society women, some single, some married.    

All during the Regency (1811-1820), Caroline lived in France and Germany, and carried on her own romances.   

But in 1820, Prince George the Regent suddenly became King George IV!  Caroline announced that she was returning to be Queen!  George offered her huge bribe to stay away.  She refused.  

George’s TORY friends rushed through a bill in Parliament, the “Bill of Pains and Penalties,” which accused Caroline of adultery and infidelity and stripped her of all titled and permitted George to divorce her.  But – Caroline and her friends had carefully cultivated George’s political enemies, the WHIGS, and they led the fight against the Bill.  

And so, in the summer of 1820, just when George was being crowned King George IV of England, Parliament was tied up in an ugly and shameful battle about royal adultery.    

The Whigs won.  Caroline stayed Queen.  But George refused to let her attend the official coronation ceremony, and in any case, Caroline was gravely ill.  She died in 1821.    

By that time, George had reunited with “Mrs. Fitzherbert.”  They made an almost respectable pair – his overindulgence had made him enormously stout and slow moving, and “Mrs. Fitzherbert” took care of him.   

George IV ruled for a decade, from 1820 – 1830.  Not an evil person actually, he gave the whole era a tawdry and scandalous tone.  Adultery, unfaithfulness, gambling, indulgence, hedonism, selfishness, seemed to be the tone of the day.  

For more on the Regency and the era of George IV, see:

http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Hanover/Regency.html

  

George, “Beau,” Brummell (1778-1840)  

George, “Beau,” Brummell WAS the “Regency.”    

The Regency, of course, refers to the ten years or so when Britain’s George III was quite mad, and the nation was ruled by a “Regent,” George’s son, who would become George IV.  Those ten years, from 1811 – 1820, were years of recovery from the exhaustion of the Napoleonic wars, and in those years, people were far more interested in “wine, women & men, and song” then in discipline and danger.  Hedonist, secular, wild, and more than a little cynical, the “Regency” years actually extended into George IV’s reign, from 1820 – 1830.   

As for “Beau” Brummel – he had the good sense to be born into a rich and very well-connected family; his father was the private secretary of Lord North, the Prime Minster during the American Revolution.  Born in 1778, in the middle of the American Revolution, Brummel was named after King George.  

When he was only sixteen, George’s father died, but left young George a vast fortune.  George decided to enjoy every penny of it.  

He had gone to Eton with the future George IV, and the two became great friends.  Both enjoyed flirting, parties, fashion, and spending mountains of money.  Beau Brummell had so much money he didn’t need to work, and so he spent his days (and especially his nights) in London’s highest society.  After 1811, when his royal friend became The Regent, “Beau” Brummell found himself intimately connected to the very top of society.  

In London, Brummell’s parties were famous.  Everyone wanted to know him, look like him, dress like him.  He became famous for his fashion – for years, “Beau” Brummell set the standard for male fashion.  He had dozens of romantic relationships, he gambled wildly, he behaved as if there were no tomorrow.  

The young men who admired him came to be called DANDIES.  What was a Regency Dandy?  A dandy was a very rich young man, who spend most of his time and money on himself.  A dandy dressed flamboyantly (silks, bright colors, floppy ties, huge hats), partied wildly, gambled crazily, went into debt constantly, flirted constantly – and did all this with style, and above all with a kind of cynical wit. In London during the Regency, and even in the smaller towns, all the rich young men wanted to be dandies – and their hero was Beau Brummell.  

And in a way, he represented something important about Regency England.   

By 1811, there had been enough battles, enough heroes, enough self-discipline.  It was time for a long wild party – and Beau Brummell was the party king.  

Alas for him, it ended badly, as maybe it had to.   

In 1818, he and The Regent got into a bitter argument.  Beau Brummell left for his French estate in Calais.  But even worse – he was broke, or rather, he was incredibly in debt.  He had run through his entire inheritance, he had gambled away his fortune, and by 1818 what he left were mountains of debts. 

In 1835, he was arrested for failing to pay those debts, and went mad.  He died, forgotten,  in an insane asylum in 1840. 

For more on Beau Brummell, see: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/regency/dandy.html