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If you remember back in 1788 there was a bit of a crisis when George III had a mental illness. The King would become very agitated, he would be violent, foam at the mouth and talk non-stop, once for 19 hours. The King recovered before Parliament could pass a bill allowing his son, also called George, to rule in his place. This is called a regency.
The King had more bouts of madness over the following years but always recovered before a regency could be put in place and, when he was behaving normally, he totally refused to agree to such a thing. In November 1810 the illness happened again, many people think because his youngest and favourite daughter, Princess Amelia, had died after a long illness. She was only 27. The King had to be put in a straitjacket and his medicine was administered by force.
Although the doctors said he would recover, the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval felt a regency was inevitable. The problem was that although George, the son, may not have been suffering from any mental illness, nobody liked him. George was 48. He was a heavy drinker and a gambler. He was a great patron of the arts but deeply untrustworthy. He had a secret marriage with Maria Fitzherbert in 1785, which he knew was illegal and which he kept lying about. In 1795 he married Princess Caroline of Brunswick, though he hated her.
The Bill was passed in 1811 and George duly became the Prince Regent. Parliament used a pretty devious way to get Royal Assent to the bill, obviously the King couldn't sign it, and the bill was passed by the Commons and the Lords. The bill allowed for the possibility that George III would recover and was called, wait for it, ‘An Act to provide for the Administration of the Royal Authority, and for the Care of His Majesty’s Royal Person, during the Continuance of His Majesty’s Illness; and for the Resumption of the Exercise of the Royal Authority by His Majesty.’
The regent was required to swear on oath to be ‘faithful and bear true allegiance’ to the King, to maintain ‘the safety, honour and dignity’ of the King and ‘the welfare of His people’ and to uphold the Protestant religion. He was duly sworn in on February 6th at Carlton House, his London residence, and he wore the uniform of the 10th Hussars. The band of the Grenadier Guards played ‘God Save the King’.
Queen Charlotte was put in charge of caring for the king. There was to be no council of regency, but against the wishes of the Whigs the regent’s powers to award peerages, offices and pensions were limited for the first year. As it turned out, George III never recovered, while to the Whigs’ disgust, the Prince Regent ignored his ties with them once he was installed. The King was kept in confinement at Windsor, blind and deaf, unable to recognise his own family and holding conversations with imaginary people or people who were dead – Handel and Lord North among them. When Queen Charlotte died in 1818 he did not understand what had happened and he himself followed her to the grave in 1820 at the age of 81, at which point the Prince Regent became King George IV.
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