Samuel Gardiner and Hugh Chisholm

“ What one king had gained from a clique another gave up to the nation. Once more, on Lord Liverpool’s death in 1827, the same question was tried with the same result. The king not only disliked Canning personally, but he was opposed to Canning’s policy. Yet after some hesitation he accepted Canning as prime minister; and when, after Canning’s death and the short ministry of Lord Goderich, the king in 1828 authorized the duke of Wellington to form a ministry, he was content to lay down the principle that the members of it were not expected to be unanimous on the Catholic question. ”

“ Fox maintained and Pitt denied that the prince of Wales, as the heir-apparent, had a right to assume the regency independently of any parliamentary vote. Pitt, with the support of both Houses, proposed to confer upon him the regency with certain restrictions. The recovery of the king in February 1789 put an end, however, to the prince’s hopes. In 1794 the prince consented to a marriage with a German Protestant princess, because his father would not pay his debts on any other terms, and his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, was brought over from Germany and married to him in 1795. ”

“ In Mrs Fitzherbert’s eyes the state law was, after all, not everything. To a Roman Catholic, and equally to any member of the Christian church, a formal marriage ceremony would be ecclesiastically and sacramentally binding; and after a period of passionate importunacy on his part they were secretly married by the Rev. R. Burt, a clergyman of the Church of England, on the 15th of December 1785. [1] There is no doubt as to Mrs Fitzherbert’s belief, supported by ecclesiastical considerations, in her correct and binding, though admittedly illegal, relationship to the prince as his canonical wife ”

“ He lived in the most extravagant way, became heavily involved in debt, and as the king would not assist him, shut up Carlton House, and went to live with Mrs Fitzherbert at Brighton. In 1787 a proposal was brought before the House of Commons by Alderman Newnham for a grant in relief of his embarrassments. It was on this occasion that Fox publicly declared in the House of Commons, as on the prince’s own authority, in answer to allusions to the marriage, that the story was a malicious falsehood. ”

“ With great unwillingness the House of Commons voted fresh sums of money to pay the prince’s debts.
In 1811 he at last became prince regent in consequence of his father’s definite insanity. No one doubted at that time that it was in his power to change the ministry at his pleasure. He had always lived in close connexion with the Whig opposition, and he now empowered Lord Grenville to form a ministry. ”

“ He disliked Canning for having taken his wife’s side very much as his father had disliked Fox for taking his own. But Lord Liverpool insisted on Canning’s admission to office, and the king gave way. Tacitly and without a struggle the constitutional victory of the last reign was surrendered. But it was not surrendered to the same foe as that from which it had been won. The coalition ministry in 1784 rested on the great landowners and the proprietors of rotten boroughs. ”

“ But if the official leaning was towards the husband, the leaning of the general public was towards the wife of a man whose own life had not been such as to justify him in complaining of her whom he had thrust from him without a charge of any kind. ”

“ In August in that year she left England, and after a little time took up her abode in Italy. The accession of George IV. brought matters to a crisis. He ordered that no prayer for his wife as queen should be admitted into the Prayer Book. ”