A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 5

The most powerful among the leaders of Opposition were Charles, Earl Grey, in the House of Lords and Henry Brougham and Lord John Russell in the House of Commons. There was some doubt as to the position which might be taken up by Canning and Huskisson and their friends. Some of the Tories believed that they might be won over to support the Duke of Wellington, in order to a.s.sist him in counteracting the efforts of the more ardent and liberal reformers, like Grey and Brougham and Russell.

Fate soon settled the question so far at least as Huskisson was concerned. The opening of the line of railway from Liverpool to Manchester, the first line of any considerable length completed in England, took place on September 15, 1830. The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Huskisson were among the distinguished visitors who were present at the opening of the railway. The friends alike of the Prime Minister and of the great expert in finance were anxious that the two should come together on this occasion, and make a personal if not a political reconciliation. The train stopped at a station; the Duke and Huskisson both got out, and were approaching to meet each other, the Duke holding out his hand, when an alarm was raised about the approach of a locomotive. A rush was made for the carriages, and in the confusion Huskisson was struck down by an open door in the moving train, and suffered such injuries that his death almost immediately followed. Huskisson was, beyond doubt, one of the most enlightened statesmen of his time in all that concerned the financial arrangements of the country. He might have been called a Liberal, just as we might call Canning a Liberal, when we think of the general direction taken by the policy of either man.

The dissatisfaction with which the speech from the throne was received found its expression in no severer form, so far at least as Parliament was concerned, than a motion by Lord Grey in the one House, and Lord Althorp in the other, for a short delay to enable both Houses to {104} consider the address in reply to the royal speech. It was made evident that the delay sought for had to do with the question of a regency, concerning which, as has been said, the King had not troubled himself to make any announcement. Now the const.i.tutional system of England had taken no account, except through the provision of a regency, of the fact that a child might become sovereign of the realm. Therefore, if Parliament did not establish a regency during the lifetime of King William, and if the King were soon to die through any accident or malady, the child Princess would come to the throne under no further const.i.tutional restraints than those which belonged to the position of a full-grown sovereign. There was another trouble, however, and one of still graver political importance, awaiting the Ministry of the Duke of Wellington.

[Sidenote: 1830--Brougham and Reform]

Henry Brougham gave notice in the House of Commons that on an early day he would bring forward a motion to raise the whole question of reform in the representative system of the country. Brougham, at this time, was regarded as the most strenuous and powerful champion of reform in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell had not yet had an opportunity of proving how steadfast were his principles as a reformer, and how great were the Parliamentary gifts which he had brought to the main purpose of his life. Moreover, Lord John Russell never had any of the kind of eloquence which made Brougham so powerful in and out of Parliament. Brougham on a popular platform could outdo the most stormy mob orator of the time. He was impa.s.sioned, boisterous, overwhelming to a degree of which we can find no adequate ill.u.s.tration even in the most tumultuous Trafalgar Square demonstrations of our later days.

Even in the House of Commons, and afterwards in what might be regarded as the deadening atmosphere of the House of Lords, Brougham was accustomed to shout and storm and gesticulate, to shake his fist and stamp, after a fas.h.i.+on which was startling even in those days, and of which now we have no living ill.u.s.tration. Brougham was at this time almost at the very zenith of his popularity among the reformers all over the country, {105} and more especially in the North of England.

When, therefore, Brougham announced that he was determined at the earliest opportunity to raise the whole question of reform in the House of Commons it became evident that the new reign was destined to open with a momentous and long const.i.tutional struggle, a struggle that might be counted upon to mark an epoch in the history of England. The news that the French legitimate monarchy had fallen and that Louis Philippe reigned as King of the French--King of the barricades he was commonly called--came in time to quicken men's hopes and animate their pa.s.sions for the approaching trial of strength between the old forms and the new spirit.

The Government refused to agree to the one day's delay which was asked for by the leaders of Opposition. On a division being taken there was a majority for Ministers in both Houses, and the Duke of Wellington had scored thus far. He had shown that he was personally determined not to concede any point to the Opposition, and he had secured a victory.

Parliament was dissolved within a few days and the country was plunged into a general election. At that time, it should be remembered, an election was a very different sort of event from that which bears the same name at the present day. An election contest could then, according to the extent and nature of the const.i.tuency, run on for a time not exceeding fifteen days, and it was accompanied by a practice of bribery, lavish, open, shameless, and profligate, such as is totally unknown to our more modern times, and such as our habits and feelings, no more than our laws, would tolerate. Intimidation and violence were also parts of every fiercely contested election, and those whom the law excluded from any part in the struggle as electors were apt to find, in that very exclusion, only another reason for taking part in it by the use of physical force. Just at the time which we are now describing there are many conditions which made a general election likely to be especially stormy and turbulent.

The distress which prevailed throughout the country had in many districts called up a spirit of something like {106} desperation, which exhibited itself in a crime of almost entire novelty, the burning of hayricks on farms. This offence became so widespread throughout large parts of the country that it gave rise to theories about an organized conspiracy against property which was supposed to be, in some vague sort of way, an outcome of the socialistic excesses which had taken place during the French Revolution and had been revived by the more recent commotions in France. The probability is that the rick-burning offences were, in the first instance, the outcome of sheer despair seeking vengeance anywhere and anyhow for its own sufferings, and then of the mere pa.s.sion for imitation in crime which finds some manner of ill.u.s.tration here and there at all periods of history. However that may be, it is certain that the offences became very common, that they were punished with merciless severity, and that the gallows was kept in constant operation.

[Sidenote: 1830--A change in const.i.tutional systems]

Now, it may be taken almost as a political axiom that whenever there is great distress at the time of a general election it is certain to give rise to some feeling of hostility against a Ministry, especially if the Ministry had been for any length of time in power. A considerable portion of the Tories had been turned against the Duke of Wellington because, under the advice of Sir Robert Peel, he had yielded at last to the demand for Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, even although, as Peel and the Duke himself declared, the concession had been made merely as a choice between Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation and civil war. Some influential Tories all over the country were asking whether Ireland had been pacified or had shown herself in the least degree grateful because an instalment of religious freedom had been granted to the Roman Catholics, and they insisted that the Duke had surrendered the supremacy of the Established Church to no purpose. It was certain, indeed, that O'Connell had not, in the slightest degree, slackened the energy of his political movement because the emanc.i.p.ating Act had been pa.s.sed. Among the opponents of reform, at all times, there are some who seem to hold that the granting of one reform ought to be enough to put a stop to all demands for any {107} other, and that it is mere ingrat.i.tude on the part of a man who has just obtained permission to follow his own form of wors.h.i.+p if he wants also to be put on an equality with his neighbors as regards the a.s.sertion of his political opinions. Therefore, the Ministry found, as the elections went on, that they had not merely all the reformers against them, but that a certain proportion of those who, in the ordinary condition of things, would have been their supporters were estranged from them merely because they had, under whatever pressure, consented to introduce any manner of reform.

When the elections were over it seemed to reasonable observers very doubtful indeed whether King William, however well inclined, would be able to retain for any length of time the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel as the leading advisers of the Crown. The country just then may be described as in a state of transition from one const.i.tutional system to another. It was growing more clear, day by day, that the time had gone by when the sovereign could hold to any one particular minister, or set of ministers, in defiance of the majority in the representative chamber and the strength of public opinion out-of-doors. On the other hand, the time had not yet arrived when the system introduced and established by the present reign could be relied upon as part of the Const.i.tution, and the sovereign could be trusted to accept, without demur, the judgment of the House of Commons as to the choice of his ministers. The new Parliament was opened on November 5, and the Royal Speech gave but little satisfaction to reformers of any cla.s.s. It contained no recommendation of const.i.tutional reform, and indeed congratulated the whole population on having the advantage of living under so faultless a political system. It concerned itself in no wise about the distress that existed in the country, except that it expressed much satisfaction at the manner in which the criminal laws had been called into severe action for the repression of offences against property.

The King conceded so much to public opinion as to recommend the appointment of a regency, in order to {108} make provision for the possibility of his life being cut short; but even this was only done in a fas.h.i.+on that seemed to say, "If you really will have it that I am likely to die soon you may humor yourselves by taking any course that seems to satisfy your scruples--it is not worth my while to interfere with your whims." The reformers therefore had clearly nothing to expect so far as the Royal Speech could deal with expectations. But they found that they had still less to expect from the intentions of the Ministry.

[Sidenote: 1830--Wellington as a politician]

In the debate on the address, in reply to the speech from the throne, Lord Grey took occasion to ask for some exposition of Ministerial policy with regard to reform of the representative system. Then the Duke of Wellington delivered a speech which may be described as unique in its way. It would be impossible to put into words any statement more frankly opposed to all Parliamentary reform. The greatest orator that ever lived, the profoundest judge who ever laid down the law to a jury, could not have prepared a statement more comprehensive and more exact as a condemnation of all reform than that which the victor of Waterloo was able to enunciate with all confidence and satisfaction.

He laid it down that it would be utterly beyond the power of the wisest political philosopher to devise a Const.i.tution so near to absolute perfection as that with which Englishmen living in the reign of his present Majesty, William the Fourth, had been endowed by the wisdom of their ancestors. He affirmed that he had never heard any suggestion which contained the slightest promise of an improvement on that Const.i.tution. He repeated, in various forms of repet.i.tion, that Englishmen already possessed all the freedom that it was good for men to have, that the rights of all cla.s.ses were equally maintained, that the happiness of every one was secured, so far as law could secure it, and that the only thing for reasonable Englishmen to do was to open their eyes and recognize the advantages conferred upon them by the Const.i.tution under which they were happy enough to live.

The Duke of Wellington probably knew nothing of {109} Voltaire's philosopher who maintained that everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, but he seemed to be pervaded by the same sentiment of complete satisfaction when he contemplated the British Const.i.tution. Finally, he declared that, so far from having any intention to touch with irreverent hand that sacred political structure for the vain purpose of improvement, he was determined to resist to the uttermost of his power every effort to interfere with the const.i.tutional arrangements which had done so much for the prosperity and the glory of the empire. We do not quote the exact words of the Duke of Wellington's speech, but we feel sure we are giving a faithful version of the meaning which he intended to convey and succeeded very clearly in conveying. The Duke of Wellington was undoubtedly one of the greatest soldiers the world has ever seen. As a soldier of conquest he was not indeed to be compared with an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon, but as a soldier of defence he has probably never had a superior. As an administrator, too, he had shown immense capacity both in India and in Europe, and had more than once brought what seemed absolute chaos into order and shape. But he had no gift for the understanding of politics, and it was happy for him, at more than one crisis of his career, that he was quite aware of his own political incapacity and was ready to defer to the judgment of other men who understood such things better than he did. We have already seen how he accepted the guidance of Peel when it became necessary to yield the claim for Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, and he was commonly in the habit of saying that Peel understood all such matters better than he could pretend to. He was not, therefore, the minister who would ruin a State or bring a State into revolution by obstinate adhesion to his own views in despite of every advice and every warning, and no doubt when he was delivering his harangue against all possible schemes of reform he felt still convinced that he was merely expressing the unalterable opinion of Peel and every other loyal subject whose judgment ought to prevail with a law-abiding people.

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In the House of Commons Brougham gave notice that on an early day he would bring forward a motion on the subject of political reform. Thus, therefore, the trumpet of battle was sounded on both sides. The struggle must now be fought out to the end. Nothing, however, could be done until the Ministry had been driven from office, and it was not by any means certain that in the House of Commons, as it was then const.i.tuted, a direct vote on the question of reform would end in a defeat of the Duke of Wellington's Government. Something that seemed almost like an accident brought about a crisis sooner than had been antic.i.p.ated. Sir Henry Parnell brought forward a motion for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into, and report upon, the estimates and amounts submitted by his Majesty with regard to the civil service. This motion had the support of the Liberal leaders and was strongly opposed by the Government. No one could have been surprised at the opposition offered by the Government, for Sir Henry Parnell's was just the sort of motion which every Ministry is sure to oppose. A government prepares its own estimates, and is not apt to be in favor of the appointment of an outside committee to inquire into their amount and their appropriation. Still, the whole question was not one to be regarded as of capital importance in ordinary times, and therefore, although the debate was one of great interest both inside and outside the House of Commons, it did not seem likely to lead to any momentous and immediate consequences.

[Sidenote: 1830--Ministerial resignations]

Sir Henry Parnell was a man of ability and character, and was regarded in the House as an authority on financial questions. He belonged to the family of Parnell the poet, the friend of Swift and Pope, and he afterwards became the first Lord Congleton, taking his t.i.tle from that part of Ches.h.i.+re where the poet and his ancestors had lived. In years, much later years, that belonged to our own times another member of the Parnell family made for himself a conspicuous place in the House of Commons and in Imperial politics, the late Charles Stewart Parnell, the famous leader of the Irish National party. Sir Henry {111} Parnell carried his motion by a majority of twenty-nine in the House of Commons.

Now in the ordinary course of things there was nothing in such an event to compel the resignation of a Ministry. It would have been quite reasonable for any Government to express a willingness to meet the wishes of the House on such a subject, to agree to the appointment of a committee, and then go on as if nothing particular had occurred. But it sometimes happens that a Government is willing, or even anxious, to accept defeat on a side issue, although of minor importance, in order to escape from, or at all events to postpone, a decision on some question of vital import. Sometimes, too, there are reasons, well known to all members of a Government but not yet in the knowledge of the public, which incline a Ministry to find a reason for resigning office in the result of some casual division which cannot be said to amount to a vote of want of confidence. Not many years have pa.s.sed since a Liberal Government, which might have seemed to ordinary observers to be secure in its position, thought it well to accept a vote on the supply of cordite in the army stores as a vote of want of confidence, and accordingly went out of office. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel appear to have come to the conclusion that the success of Sir Henry Parnell's motion would furnish them with a plausible excuse for withdrawing at a convenient moment from an unpromising position. Henry Brougham, as we have already said, had given formal notice in the House of Commons that he would bring forward a motion for leave to introduce a definite scheme of Parliamentary reform. Now everybody knew that Brougham was at that time thoroughly earnest on the subject of reform, and that he had, during the recent general election, the best possible reasons for knowing that the great majority in the North of England, at all events, was behind him. On the other hand, ministers themselves had had ample opportunities of finding out, during the elections, that a large number of those whom at other times they might have regarded as their own supporters were estranged from them or had actually turned {112} against them. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel probably thought that their wisest course would be to let Lord Grey and Brougham and their friends try what they could do with the monstrous spectre of reform which they had conjured up, and wait till the country had recovered its senses before again undertaking to act as ministers of the Crown.

[Sidenote: 1830--Wellington and Peel resign]

An odd and rather absurd incident, which created much scandal and alarm at the time, and soon pa.s.sed out of public recollection, had helped no doubt to bring the Duke of Wellington and Peel to their decision. The King and Queen had been invited to dine with the Lord Mayor and the Corporation at the Guildhall on November 9, and had accepted the invitation. The Duke of Wellington and the other ministers were to be among the guests.

Shortly before the appointed day the Duke of Wellington got a letter from the Lord Mayor-elect, telling him that he had received private information about some mysterious organized attempt to be made against the Duke himself on the occasion of his visit to the City, and urging the Duke to have the streets well guarded with soldiers, in order to prevent the success of any such lawless and atrocious enterprise. Now the Duke was not a man to care much, personally, about an alarm of this kind, but he thought it would be rather an unseemly spectacle if the streets of the City had to be guarded by troops when the new sovereign went to be the guest of the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall. The attempt, to be sure, was said to be directed against the Duke himself and not against the King; but still it would hardly do, it would scarcely have a happy effect on public opinion at home and abroad, if the first visit of the Sailor King, the popular William, to the City were to be made the occasion of a murderous attack on the King's Prime Minister. It might get into the public mind that what had happened in Paris was likely to happen in London, and the effect on Europe might be most damaging to the credit of the country. So the banquet was put off; the sovereign and his Prime Minister did not visit the City. A vague panic raged everywhere, {113} and the Funds went alarmingly down. The story which had impressed the Lord Mayor-elect was in all likelihood only a mere scare. But it had, no doubt, some effect in deciding the action of the Ministry. At all events, the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues determined to try what strength the reformers had behind them. They tendered their resignation; the King was prevailed upon to accept it, and it was announced to Parliament and the public that the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were no longer in office.

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CHAPTER LXX.

LE ROI D'YVETOT.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Eccentricities of William the Fourth]

We may turn for a moment from the path of politics to mention a fact that is worth mentioning, if only because of the immense difference between the accepted usages of that time and any usages that would be possible in our days. King William shortly after his accession created his eldest son Earl of Munster, and conferred upon all his other sons and daughters the rank that belongs to the younger children of a marquis. The King's living children, as has been said before, were all illegitimate. In raising them to the rank of the peerage King William was only following the example of many or most of his predecessors.

People thought none the less of him, at the time, because he had bestowed such honor upon his progeny. Charles Greville, the famous Clerk of the Council to George the Fourth and William the Fourth, describes the new sovereign with characteristic frankness and lack of reverence. "Altogether," says Greville, writing about a fortnight after the King's accession, "he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, not stupid, burlesque, bustling old fellow, and if he doesn't go mad may make a very decent king, but he exhibits oddities."

The early bringing-up of the new King had certainly not tended much to fill him with the highest aspirations or to qualify him for the most dignified duties of royalty. "Never," says Greville, "was elevation like that of King William the Fourth. His life has. .h.i.therto been pa.s.sed in obscurity and neglect, in miserable poverty, surrounded by a numerous progeny of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, without consideration or friends, and he was ridiculous from his grotesque ways and little, meddling curiosity."

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He appears to have been a man of rather kindly, and certainly not ungenerous, disposition, and it is decidedly to his credit, in one sense, that the expectations of most of the Whigs were disappointed when he came to the throne. During his career in the Navy he had a way of disregarding orders, and when in command of a squadron would sometimes take his own vessel on an expedition according to his own fancy, and leave the remainder of the vessels under his charge to do as well as they could without him until it pleased him to return. Some of his later exploits in this way drew down on him a marked expression of disapproval from the Duke of Wellington, then at the head of the Government, and for this reason it was thought by many, when William came to the throne, that he would be sure to dismiss from his service the Prime Minister who once had offended him so deeply. A man with a more malevolent turn of mind would very likely have acted as public expectation seemed to foreshadow, but William, as we have seen, soon made it clear that he had no fault to find with the Duke of Wellington, that he cherished no ill-will and was quite ready to let bygones be bygones. There can be no doubt that William, although he had no great defects of any deep or serious nature, no defects at least which are not common enough among the sovereigns of his time, was yet as undignified a figure for a throne as even the modern comic opera itself could imagine.

He was eccentric to a degree that sometimes seemed to suggest a lurking tendency to insanity. He was fussy, garrulous, excitable, noisy, overbearing, apt to take strong likes and dislikes and to express his likings and his dislikings with an utter disregard for the accepted conventionalities of social life.

He could explode at a moment's notice into a burst of rage which sometimes made itself felt for hours, and perhaps when the next day came he had forgotten all about it and greeted those who were its especial objects with hilarious good-humor. There were many anecdotes told about him in the days not long before his accession to the throne which were commonly believed by those who knew him, {116} and which it would not be possible to reproduce in the modest pages suitable to our own times.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Some strange doings of the King]

Now it would certainly be most unfair to accept every story told by gossip about some exalted personage as a story worthy of credit and qualified to take its place in authentic history, but, at the same time, it is quite fair and reasonable when forming an estimate of the exalted personage's character to take some account of the sayings of contemporary gossip. We may be sure that there were stories told about the father of Frederick the Great, about Catherine of Russia, about a late King of Bavaria, which were not true, but none the less the historian is undoubtedly helped to form an estimate of the ways and doings of these exalted personages by the collective testimony of the stories that are told about them and believed in their own time.

William the Fourth could not, when he ascended the throne, suddenly shake off all the rough manners and odd ways which he had allowed himself to foster during his long career as a Prince of the Blood Royal, as a sailor, and as a man much given to the full indulgence of his humors, whatever they might happen to be.

After he had become King, and it was part of his royal duty to give great State dinners, it was sometimes his way to behave himself on the occasions of those festivities after a fas.h.i.+on which even W. S. Gilbert never could have caricatured in any "Mikado" or other such piece of delightful burlesque. The King was fond of making speeches at his State dinners, and it was his way to ramble along on all manner of subjects in the same oration. Whatever idea happened to come uppermost in his mind he usually blurted out, without the slightest regard for time, place, or company. This habit of his became very embarra.s.sing now and then when some of the amba.s.sadors of great European States happened to be guests at his dinner-table. In the presence of the French Amba.s.sador, for instance, the King, while delivering his after-dinner speech, would suddenly recall some of his recollections of the days when the great Napoleon held the Imperial throne of France, and he would then, perhaps, close a sentence {117} with an exultant reference to the glorious triumphs we had obtained over our enemies the French.

On one occasion when Leopold, King of the Belgians, was dining with him the King suddenly observed that his royal guest was drinking water, and he called to him with an oath and demanded what he was drinking that sort of stuff for; and not content with the poor King's plea that he drank water because he liked it better than wine, William insisted that, in his house at least, his royal brother must swallow the juice of the grape. One day when Talleyrand was among his guests King William favored the company with a very peculiar sort of speech, and he concluded the speech by proposing a toast which is described by those who heard it as utterly unsuited for publication. One of the guests was Charles Greville. He was anxious to know what impression this extraordinary performance had made upon Talleyrand. He asked Talleyrand in a whisper if he had ever heard anything like that before.

But Talleyrand, who had listened to the oration and the toast with unmoved composure, was not to be thrown off his balance or drawn into any expression of opinion by an indiscreet question. He merely answered that it was certainly "bien remarquable."

The d.u.c.h.ess of Kent and the young Princess Victoria were dining with the King one day, and some of the guests, although not all, were well aware that there had been differences of opinion lately between William and his sister-in-law. The guests, however, were amazed indeed when the King rose and delivered a speech in which he raked up all his old grievances against the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, and complained of her and denounced her as if he were the barrister, the hero of the old familiar story, who, having no case, is advised to abuse the plaintiff's attorney. The child Princess Victoria is said to have been so distressed by some parts of this unexpected oration that she burst into tears; but the d.u.c.h.ess, her mother, retained self-control, and sat as composedly silent as if the King had been taking his part in some dignified State ceremonial.

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King William sometimes broke the conventionalities of royal deportment in a quite different sort of way, in a way which undoubtedly shocked the traditional sensibilities of the older officials of the Court, but with which the lovers of modern and more simple manners are inclined sometimes, perhaps, to have a sort of wilful sympathy. He would sometimes insist on dropping some great royal visitor from abroad at the door of his hotel, just as if he were an ordinary London resident giving a lift in his carriage to a friend from the country. At the most solemn State ceremonial he would bustle about irresponsibly, and talk in a loud voice to any one who might seem to him at the moment to be an attractive person with whom to have a pleasant chat. It might happen that some great State functionary or some dignified amba.s.sador from a foreign capital, who ought to have been spoken to long before, was kept waiting until the unconcerned sovereign had had his talk out with some comparatively insignificant personage who had been known to the King in former days, and whose appearance brought with it certain early and jovial a.s.sociations. Many of the King's minor offences in this way seem now to the unconcerned reader about as venial as that by which Marie Antoinette in her early Court days broke through the established rules of etiquette among the ladies of her bedchamber by s.n.a.t.c.hing her chemise one morning with her own hands instead of allowing it to pa.s.s in its regular order from the lowest to the highest degree of the attendant women. But it certainly was perhaps a little too much of a departure from the usages of a Court when the monarch, about to sign an important doc.u.ment in the presence of his State Council, flung down the quill with which he had begun to write and proclaimed it to be a d.a.m.ned bad pen.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Beranger's King of Yvetot]

Every day the King was sure to astonish those around him by some breach of Court conventionality, little or great. He was liable to strong likings and dislikings, and he took no pains to conceal his sentiments in either case. He seems to have had an affectionate regard for his young niece, the Princess Victoria, and a strong dislike to her {119} mother. The d.u.c.h.ess of Kent would appear to have had no particular liking for him, and she very much objected to be brought into familiar a.s.sociation with the sons and daughters of the eccentric sovereign.

Perhaps it is not to William's discredit that he always treated these children as if they were his legitimate descendants. It was no fault of theirs if the ceremony of marriage had not preceded their coming into the world, and the King apparently did not see why even the most righteous person should feel any objection to their frequent presence.

But one can understand that the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent must have often wished that the sense of public decorum, which was even already growing up in English society, should not be shocked by the too frequent reminder that the King had several children who were not born in wedlock.

Beranger, the once popular French lyric poet, satirized a certain royal personage, a contemporary of William the Fourth, as the King of Yvetot.

There was a French legend which told of the conditions under which the descendants of a certain lord of the manor in Brittany had been created by Clotaire kings of Yvetot. Beranger's monarch is described by him as one having made little mark of his own in history, who could live very comfortably without troubling himself about glory, and who liked to be crowned with a simple cotton nightcap. This monarch, the poet tells us, could enjoy his four meals a day, and liked very often to lift his gla.s.s to his lips.

There are many reasons, we are told, why some of his subjects might have called him a father to his people, but the name was not applied by the poet in the ordinary metaphorical sense of the word. He never desired to trouble his neighbors, and never disturbed his mind with any projects for the increase of his dominions, and, like a true model to all potentates, found his ambition quite satisfied in the indulgence of his own pleasures while desiring as little as possible to interfere with the pastimes of his people. Every verse of the ballad ends by telling us what a good little king was this sovereign of Yvetot. With certain slight alterations Beranger's satirical verses might {120} have served as a picture of William the Fourth. But our good little King of Yvetot was not destined altogether to have quite an easy time of it, although he was more successful in that way than the monarch for whom Beranger intended his satire. William had come in for the age of reform. The whole course of English history hardly tells us of any reign, of anything like equal length, into which so many reforms were crowded. William the Fourth, we may be sure, would never have troubled himself or any of his subjects about any projects of improvement in the political or social conditions of his realm. He would have been quite content to let things go on just as they had been going in the days before he came to the throne, and would probably have asked no higher t.i.tle of affection from the loyalty of his subjects than the familiar name that they gave him of the Sailor King. When for a while he began to be called the Patriot King he must have a.s.sociated the t.i.tle with a sense of all the worry and trouble brought upon him by the incessant preparation of patriotic projects for the improvement of everything all over the country.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Lord Grey and William the Fourth]

It seems like a curious freak of fate that such a sovereign, at such a time, should have had to get rid of the Duke of Wellington and accept Lord Grey as his Prime Minister. The Duke of Wellington was himself simple, plain, and occasionally rough in manners, with little taste for Court ceremonial and little inclination for the exchange of stately phrase and inflated language. There are many anecdotes told of Wellington which show that he had no more liking or apt.i.tude for the ways dear to a Court functionary than King William himself had. Lord Grey was a man of the most stately bearing and the most refined style.