Divorced, Beheaded, Died: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks (11 page)

George had many sexual liaisons from an early age. When he was in his early twenties he fell in love with the widowed Maria Fitzherbert, and in 1785 he married her in secret, knowing that the marriage was illegal, as she was Catholic and he was therefore contravening the Royal Marriages Act.

By 1795 George had run up shockingly huge debts and was forced by his father to marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. They disliked each other from the moment they met. She was astonished that he was so fat, in contrast to his handsome portrait. In turn, her coarseness and poor hygiene appalled him (her underwear was apparently ‘never well washed or changed often enough’). On their wedding night George was so drunk that he had to leave the bedchamber. The next morning, for ‘the only time they were together as husband and wife’, they conceived Princess Charlotte. The couple soon separated. George tried to arrange a divorce on the grounds of her adultery, but this disgusted the public, who accused George of hypocrisy on account of his many liaisons, so the proceedings were abandoned.

In 1811 George became Prince Regent when his father’s mental illness grew worse. He initiated some major building projects, working in particular with the architect John Nash. In 1815 they created the gorgeous Royal Pavilion at George’s seaside property in Brighton and they developed Regent Street and Regent’s Park, which were lined with magnificent villas. Once George was king, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle were modernized and he persuaded the government to set up the National Gallery.

When George III died in 1820, George IV planned a magnificent coronation which was almost ruined by the arrival of Caroline to claim her role as queen. She was literally shut out of the celebrations, as the doors of Westminster Abbey were locked against her on the undeniable grounds that she had no ticket. Soon after she fell ill. When George was told, on the death of Napoleon, ‘I have, Sire, to congratulate you: your greatest enemy is dead,’ George replied, ‘Is she, by God!’ Caroline did in fact die shortly afterwards, claiming to have been poisoned.

When in power, George changed his political allegiance to the Tories, and went from supporting Catholic emancipation to blocking it. Only after the resignation of the entire cabinet in 1829 was the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, able to force the King to sign the Catholic Relief Act, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament.

During George’s reign public demands for the vote increased and were met with repression, including the infamous Peterloo Massacre in which the Cavalry charged a defenceless crowd, resulting in 700 casualties.

George’s drunkenness and gluttony increased during his final years. When drunk he was wont to claim participation in a famous charge at the Battle of Waterloo. He would shout to Wellington, ‘Was that not so?’ To which Wellington would reply, ‘I have often heard Your Majesty say so.’ He died in 1830 at Windsor Castle, from a burst blood vessel in his stomach.

W
ILLIAM
IV

Reigned 1830–1837

William IV, according to his obituary in
The Times
, ‘was not a man of talent...but he had a warm heart, and it was an English heart’. Born in 1765 at Buckingham Palace, he was the third son of George III. As he was not expected to be king, he entered the navy at the age of thirteen. He served with some distinction in America and the West Indies, earning Horatio Nelson’s approbation. In 1789 he was made Rear Admiral, but spoke up against the war with France and thereafter was not involved in the Napoleonic Wars. Eventually his brother George, who was Prince Regent at the time, made him Lord High Admiral, and he achieved some reforms in this post, including the banning of the use of the brutal cat o’ nine tails for routine punishments.

‘Sailor Billy’ had his share of love affairs: in Hanover he was reportedly seen ‘with a lady of the town against a wall’. In the early 1790s William began a long relationship with an Irish actress, Dorothea Jordan, with whom he had ten illegitimate children. But in 1811, under pressure from his mother, the couple split. In 1817 William’s niece, Princess Charlotte, died in childbirth. As Charlotte had been next in line to the throne and George IV and his estranged wife had no other heirs, George’s brothers began to look for suitable wives. William married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1818, but none of their children survived infancy. It was, however, a happy marriage. When William found out he had become king on the death of his brother in 1830, he went straight back to bed so that he could experience the thrill of sleeping with a queen.

As king, he was soon faced with a constitutional crisis when a Whig government committed to extending the vote came to power. William did not support the proposed Reform Bill, but was forced to ensure that the House of Lords accepted it. This was the first great extension of the vote (though in fact it only extended the electorate from fourteen per cent to eighteen per cent of the population), and it ended the scandal of the so-called rotten boroughs, places where few, if any, people lived but which were represented by an MP, while areas with huge populations had no MP.

William’s reign also saw the beginnings of major social reform in Britain, with the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, which reformed the poverty relief system, and the abolition of slavery and child labour. William spoke against the abolition of slavery, however, saying that crofters in the Highlands were worse off than slaves in the Caribbean and calling notable abolitionist William Wilberforce a ‘fanatic and hypocrite’. He was the last king to choose a prime minister against the will of Parliament, replacing Lord Melbourne with Sir Robert Peel.

William IV died of pneumonia in 1837 at Windsor Castle.

V
ICTORIA

Reigned 1837–1901

Queen Victoria was the longest-reigning British monarch, at sixty-three years and seven months. Her hard work and exemplary family life restored the reputation of the monarchy, although there was major criticism of the Queen for the extended period of mourning she went into after her beloved husband Albert’s death. Contrary to her dour reputation, Victoria was not prudish and solemn, but vivacious and high-spirited, at least in the early years of her reign.

Victoria was born in 1819 at Kensington Palace, London. Her father, the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, died when she was eight months old and she was brought up by her mother and the head of her household, Sir John Conroy. Conroy was very controlling and seemed intent on exploiting his role as companion to the Duchess of Kent. Victoria detested him and his influence on her mother.

William IV died in 1837 and an eighteen-year-old Victoria took the throne. She immediately removed herself from the influence of Conroy and her mother. Instead, she enthusiastically adopted the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, as her political tutor, earning herself the nickname ‘Mrs Melbourne’ because of all the time they spent together. When Robert Peel and the Tories came to power in 1839, he insisted she replace her Whig ladies of the chamber with Tories. Victoria refused, causing a constitutional crisis, and Melbourne was recalled.

In 1840 a marriage to her first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was arranged. For Victoria, it was love at first sight: Albert, she said, had ‘the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance’. Together they worked very hard to fulfil the role of a constitutional monarchy, but Albert was never popular in England, despite the huge success of his pet project, the Great Exhibition of 1851, which six million visitors from all over the world visited to marvel at the best of British technology and design. Together, Albert and Victoria had nine children, all but one of whom married into the princely dynasties and ruling families of Europe, making her the ‘grandmother’ of the continent.

Victoria and Albert were effective figureheads during the traumas of the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War, but in 1861, at the age of forty-two, Albert died of typhoid fever. Victoria blamed her eldest son Albert Edward (Bertie) for his death, believing it was brought on by stress caused by his liaison with an actress. She was heartbroken and went into a long period of isolation, refusing to undertake her public duties, for which she was heavily criticized.

After a decade she was coaxed back into a more active public role. Victoria had very decided opinions, in particular with regard to foreign policy (as she was related to most of the royal families in Europe, she could claim some special expertise). She also had strong opinions about her Prime Ministers, loving Melbourne and Disraeli and loathing Gladstone and Palmerston. The monarch’s role, however, was bound to diminish, as Prime Ministers Gladstone and Disraeli increased the electorate, so that by the late 1880s there was virtually universal male suffrage.

In 1876, Disraeli – who once said of flattering royalty that ‘you should lay it on with a trowel’ – made Victoria Empress of India. She fully supported the imperial expansion policy of Lord Salisbury, her last Prime Minister, which saw Britain participate in the ‘Scramble for Africa’.

In later life she had two controversial friendships with servants. The most important was with John Brown, a ghillie at her Balmoral estate. Her affection for him was such that when she died in 1901 she was buried with a lock of his hair and Brown’s mother’s wedding ring in one hand and Albert’s dressing gown in the other. After Brown’s death in 1883, she had a close relationship with an Indian servant, Abdul Karim, who taught her Hindi.

The Victorian period saw a massive expansion of the British Empire, the first sustained increase in life expectancy, a substantial increase in urban populations and scientific and technological advances that led to innovations such as train travel, telegraphs, telephones, submarines and the machine gun.

E
DWARD
VII

Reigned 1901–1910

Edward had to wait sixty years to become king, and although he had been Prince of Wales since his infancy, his mother denied him the chance to play a significant role in state affairs. But he is claimed as the first king of England to embrace the modern constitutional role of strict non-interference in politics, and he was a very popular monarch.

Prince Albert Edward was born in 1841 at Buckingham Palace, the eldest son of Victoria and Albert. He was given a good education, but soon became a disappointment to his parents, who set impossible standards. Victoria believed he was responsible for the death of her beloved Albert after he became involved with an actress. She wrote: ‘I never can...look at him without a shudder.’ Edward loved to live the aristocratic lifestyle of shows, fine dining, drinking, horse racing, shooting and sailing. He was associated with numerous glamorous women, such as the beautiful actresses Lily Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt. His wife, Alexandra of Denmark, seems to have accepted his affairs and even invited his most faithful mistress, Alice Keppel (great-grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles), to see Edward one last time when he was on his deathbed.

But at the same time Edward was, as Disraeli said, ‘informed, intelligent and of a sweet manner’. His avuncular attitude and his skill in foreign relations are remembered in his sobriquet ‘Uncle of Europe’ and ‘the Peacemaker’. His successful tour of India in 1876 led to his mother being offered the title of Empress of India.

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son refused to take the name Albert as king, as he felt that only his father deserved to use that illustrious name – and he also wished to take the name of an English king. But as King Edward he played his role with distinction. He is said to have been the first heir to come to the throne without debt, and the public were enthusiastic for a new, livelier royal regime. He was particularly involved with foreign affairs, and his numerous tours abroad were often instrumental in improving diplomatic relations. For example, he helped seal the 1904 Entente Cordiale and therefore the alliance between the UK, France and Russia. He also helped to reform the British Armed Forces, something that was shown to be necessary by the Boer Wars and the increasing threat from Germany. Knowing his nephew, the Kaiser Wilhelm, Edward feared he would bring Europe to war.

All in all, Edward managed the transition into the twentieth century well. He died in 1910 at Buckingham Palace, after suffering several heart attacks. He and Alexandra left five surviving children.

The House of Windsor

In 1917 the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was renamed the House of Windsor by George V, because of the rising anti-German sentiment as the horrors of the First World War continued. The King’s cousins, the Battenbergs, also changed their name to Mountbatten. Although this may seem like an early piece of political correctness, the new name symbolized a new, more democratic approach by the royal family. By the reign of George V, English monarchs had embraced their constitutional role, their status as a figurehead and their voluntary abstinence from interference in the politics of the nation. They may have been mostly conservative in their outlook and probably in their personal politics, but they hid this from public view, finding a way of surviving without being seen as too much of an anachronism. Where the future of the monarchy lies in an age of divorce, celebrity stardom, and the internet remains to be seen.

G
EORGE
V

Reigned 1910–1936

Sir Harold Nicholson once said of George V: ‘For seventeen years he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps.’ George’s ambition was to have the best stamp album in Britain and, although an animal-lover, he once shot 1000 pheasants in six hours. He was, however, a popular king – he was calm, straightforward and a moderating influence in times of national crisis.

George V was born in 1865 at Marlborough House in London. As he was only the second son of Edward VII, he was allowed to join the navy and lead a relatively normal life. After the unexpected death of his older brother Albert, he married Albert’s fiancée, Mary of Teck. The marriage was quite happy, producing six children, and the two of them were the epitome of royal dignity. Sir Henry Channon said of Mary: ‘Her appearance was formidable; her manner, well, it was like talking to St Paul’s Cathedral.’ Mary was of considerable help to her husband, advising him on his speeches and matters of state.

Politically, George was less resistant to change than his father. In 1906 he campaigned for the greater involvement of Indians in government. At the beginning of his reign, he upheld the supremacy of the House of Commons by threatening to create peers to force Lloyd George’s People’s Budget through the House of Lords. He expressed his horror at the violence that took place as the Irish Free State came into existence. In 1924 he accepted the first Labour government, under Ramsay MacDonald, saying, ‘My grandfather would have hated it, my father could hardly have tolerated it, but I march with the times.’ During the General Strike of 1926, he urged the government to be moderate in their dealings with the trade unions, saying, ‘Try living on their wages’ to those who claimed the strikers were revolutionaries. During his reign, the franchise was given to all men and women over the age of twenty-one, and the Dominions were given effective independence from Britain.

During the First World War, George helped as much as he could by visiting the front, hospitals and organizations important to the war effort. He and Mary also tried to avoid an ostentatious lifestyle. In 1917, to appease anti-German feeling, they changed the name of their dynasty from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor (Kaiser Wilhelm once joked that he was going to see Shakespeare’s
Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
). At the end of the war, as the old regimes were destroyed, he felt he had to involve himself in rescuing dethroned relatives, but he was obliged to leave the Romanovs of Russia to their fate for fear of political consequences.

As a father, he was strict – ‘My father was frightened of his mother, I was frightened of my father and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.’ He was not impressed by his eldest son Edward, and prayed that the crown would go to his younger son Bertie, the future George VI, and his granddaughter, Elizabeth.

George V died in 1936 at Sandringham of bronchitis. His physician apparently hastened the end to prevent more strain on the family and so the announcement could appear in the morning edition of
The Times
.

E
DWARD
VIII

Reigned 1936

Edward VIII was born in 1894 at White Lodge, Richmond. He was badly affected by the isolated upbringing typical in the British royal family. He once described his mother as having ice in her veins, although there are reports of the Queen playing tenderly with her children. His father, however, certainly thought little of Edward’s potential as a king.

Edward was handsome and sporty. He attended the Royal Naval College and later served in the Grenadier Guards, but he was not allowed to serve at the front during the First World War, much to his regret. After the war, he went on a series of very successful tours of the empire – Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and India – as well as the US, where he was extremely popular. Always fashionably dressed and very photogenic, he became a media star. He conducted a number of affairs, particularly with married women, which added to the playboy reputation that further estranged him from his father.

In 1931 he met and fell in love with Wallis Simpson, a married American woman who already had one divorce under her belt, and they became lovers. She was beautifully dressed, witty and confident. Images of them together began to appear in the American newspapers, although the British media deferentially remained silent on the subject.

When George V died in 1936 and Edward became king, he told the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, that he intended to marry Wallis, who had started divorce proceedings against her second husband. Baldwin told him that the head of the Church of England could not marry a divorcée, a hard line that might have been influenced by the fact that Wallis was suspected of leaking information to the Nazis and having other lovers, including the Nazi ambassador to London, Joaquim von Ribbentrop.

Edward could not accept this, although Wallis offered to give him up. Further negotiations took place. Baldwin presented the case to the Prime Ministers of the dominions, who made it clear that they would not accept the marriage. Edward, told that he could not marry and stay king, decided to abdicate. His heartfelt announcement was broadcast to the nation, though he was not allowed to broadcast an earlier appeal to his people.

Edward and Wallis went to France, where they were married in June 1937. They paid a visit to Hitler in Germany, and when France fell the British government became concerned about contact with Nazi agents and Edward was sent to the Bahamas as Governor in order to get him out of the way. After the war, Wallis and Edward lived a fashionable but ultimately empty life and relations with the royal family were never fully mended. Edward died in 1972 of cancer at his house in Paris and was buried at Frogmore, Windsor. Wallis was interred next to him when she died in 1986. The couple had no children.

G
EORGE
VI

Reigned 1936–1952

George VI epitomized the public service ethos of the House of Windsor. Like his father but unlike his brother, he sacrificed much for the throne. Although a shy man, he helped lead the nation successfully through the trauma of the Second World War, and was much-loved by his people.

George VI, known to his family as Bertie, was born in 1895 at Sandringham, the second son of George V and Mary of Teck. He was shy on account of his bad stammer, suffered from knock knees and stomach ulcers, and was ‘easily frightened and prone to tears’. This may have been due to the neglect he suffered at the hands of his nurse, who mostly ignored him. As the King’s second son, he was allowed to see action during the First World War, in the Battle of Jutland, as a naval officer.

Despite his natural timorousness, he could be determined at times. He pursued Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon for two years before she consented to marry him, and he worked hard on his stammer and his shyness so that he could perform his necessary royal duties. At heart he was a family man who would have preferred a normal life with his wife and daughters. The marriage was unusual in that it was not arranged, and Elizabeth the perfect complement to him. She was gracious, witty, hard-working and put people at ease.

George was horrified when his brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936. He felt totally unprepared for the role of king, but his sense of duty was strong and he was determined to do a good job. Before the war, he went on important diplomatic tours of France, the USA and Canada. Although the King was originally in favour of trying to appease Nazi Germany, he staunchly supported Churchill as Prime Minister and the two had a good working relationship.

George and Elizabeth played a crucial role in keeping morale high during the war. Despite the dangers, George decided to stay in London, and the Queen and their two daughters refused to leave without him. They were often seen out and about in war-torn London, inspecting the damage caused by bombing and sympathizing and comforting those who had lost homes and loved ones. Elizabeth was glad when Buckingham Palace was bombed in September 1940, saying, ‘I feel we can look the East End in the face.’ On one occasion, a member of the crowd shouted at George, ‘Thank God for a good king,’ to which he replied, ‘Thank God for a good people.’

After the war, the King had a good relationship with Clement Attlee, as the Labour Party introduced the welfare state, and the royal family adapted well to the transition from Empire to Commonwealth.

George died of cancer in 1952 at Sandringham, leaving his wife and two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret.

E
LIZABETH
II

Reigned 1952–present

As of 2009, Queen Elizabeth II is the third longest-reigning monarch, currently at fifty-seven years. She has overtaken Elizabeth I (forty-four years) and Henry III (fifty-six), and is running down George III (fifty-nine) and Queen Victoria (sixty-three). Although she has faced criticism during her long reign, she has always undertaken her royal duties with great diligence and dignity: ‘I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice. But I can do something else – I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.’

Elizabeth was born in 1926 at 17 Bruton Street, London. She was ten years old when her father became king, and she was raised as the heir to the throne from then on. From an early age she had a keen sense of responsibility – she is reported to have once given an officer of the guard permission to march off from her pushchair.

In 1947 she married her third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, who had been living in England since the monarchy had been expelled from Greece. He served in the navy with distinction during the war – he was mentioned in dispatches and rose to become one of the youngest first lieutenants. He and Elizabeth first met in 1939, when he was an eighteen-year-old cadet. They started exchanging letters and gradually fell in love. When they married he renounced his titles, became a British subject and took his mother’s name of Mountbatten, converting from Greek Orthodox to Church of England. He is now the longest-serving consort in British history. He is intensely loyal and intelligent, but is prone to hilarious and sometimes offensive gaffes, although this has not harmed his popularity with the British people. Together, Elizabeth and Philip had four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward.

Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 was the first one to be broadcast to the nation, and many people bought their first television in order to watch it. The royal family found a way of adapting to the new media age that saw the monarchy becoming increasingly popular for a while. The Queen’s broadcasts, walkabouts and tireless charitable work, helped by the stately presence of the Queen Mother, helped an outdated institution to survive into the age of the computer.