The causes of insanity are generally obscure. In the case of George III the disease cannot be traced to a progenitor, nor did it descend to his issue, unless the moral perversity of his sons be regarded as a form of mental obliquity. It is highly probable that the conduct of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York produced in their father a state of nervous tension conducive to, if not the actual cause of, madness. No proof of this is possible; but having regard to the King’s despotic temper, his love of plain living, and his horror of gambling and debauchery, we may plausibly refer to a private cause the sudden breakdown of a strong constitution at a time when public affairs had become singularly calm.

Throughout the summer of 1788 he became steadily weaker. A stay at Cheltenham was of no avail. Indeed, an enemy of that place tried to assign the King’s malady solely to its waters. The King had to forego the long walks and rides which had formerly tired out all his suite; and in October he returned to Kew much aged and broken. Nevertheless the indomitable will asserted itself in one curious detail. He always remained standing during interviews with his Ministers; and he is stated by George Rose to have kept on his feet for three hours and forty minutes during a portentous interview with Pitt, which must have strained his strength to the breaking point.634 At the levee of 24th October at St. James’s, he made a praiseworthy effort to appear well in order “to stop further lies and any fall of the stocks.” But the effort was too great, as Pitt perceived afterwards during a private interview.

Nevertheless, on the following day the King removed to Windsor. There the decline in health continued, so that, after attending a hunt, he exclaimed to Lady Effingham: “My dear Effy, you see me all at once an old man.”635 Even so he continued his correspondence with Pitt much as usual, until on 5th November there came a sudden collapse.

Again we have to confess ignorance as to the final cause. Mrs. Papendiek, wife of the royal barber, ascribes it to the King’s annoyance at the endeavour of the Duke of York to introduce Turkish military instruments into the band of the Guards. Rose mentions a discussion with the Duke at dinner on the 5th, relative to a murder. All, however, are agreed that the merest trifles had long sufficed to make the King flurried and angry, as had frequently appeared during the drives with the princesses. This peculiarity now suddenly rose to the point where madness begins. It is even said that at that dinner he without provocation suddenly rushed at the Prince of Wales, pinned him to the wall, and dared him to contradict the King of England. The Prince burst into tears, the Queen became hysterical, and it was with some difficulty that the King was induced to retire to his room. During that evening and night he raved incessantly, and the chief physician, Sir George Baker, feared for his life. A curious incident is mentioned by Mrs. Papendiek. She avers that on the following night the King arose, took a candle, and went to look at the Queen as she slept. She awoke in an agony of terror, whereupon he soothed her and seemed to take comfort himself. We may doubt the authenticity of the incident, as also the correctness of Mrs. Papendiek’s narrative when she describes the offensive air of authority which the Prince of Wales at once assumed, his demand of an interview with the Queen, even on political affairs, and his striking the floor with his stick to express displeasure.636

It is certain, however, that the behaviour of the Prince was far from seemly. He took the direction of affairs in the palace with an abruptness which caused the Queen much pain. “Nothing was done but by his orders,” wrote Miss Burney; “the Queen interfered not in anything. She lived entirely in her two new rooms, and spent the whole day in patient sorrow and retirement with her daughters.” Worst of his acts, perhaps, was the taking possession of the King’s papers, a proceeding which his apologists pass over in discreet silence. Among those documents, we may note, were several which proved that Pitt had not seldom drafted the royal rebukes. In other respects the exultation of the Prince at least wore the veil of decency, therein comparing favourably with the joy coarsely expressed by his followers at Brooks’s Club.637

Secret intrigues for assuring the triumph of the Whigs began at once. It is significant that that veteran schemer, the Lord Chancellor, Thurlow, proceeded to Windsor on 6th November, at the Prince’s command, and dined and supped with him. The ostensible object of their meeting was to consider the mode of treating His Majesty, who had been violent during the night.638 But the design of the Prince was to detach from Pitt the highest legal authority in the land. To this he was instigated by Captain Payne, Comptroller of his Household, who wrote to Sheridan that Thurlow would probably take this opportunity of breaking with his colleagues, if they proposed to restrict the powers of the Regent.639 Payne augured correctly. Thurlow had his scruples as to such a betrayal; but they vanished at the suggestion that he should continue in his high office under the forthcoming Whig Ministry.

This bargain implied the shelving of Lord Loughborough, who for five years had attached himself to the Whigs in the hope of gaining the woolsack. Had Fox been in England, it is unlikely that he would have sanctioned this betrayal of a friend in order to gain over an enemy. But, with Sheridan as go-between, and the Prince as sole arbiter, the bargain was soon settled. Light has been thrown on these events by the publication of the Duchess of Devonshire’s Diary. In it she says: “He [Sheridan] cannot resist playing a sly game: he cannot resist the pleasure of acting alone; and this, added to his natural want of judgment and dislike of consultation frequently has made him commit his friends and himself.”640 Perhaps it was some sense of the untrustworthiness of Sheridan which led Fox, in the midst of a Continental tour with Mrs. Armstead, to return from Bologna at a speed which proved to be detrimental to his health. After a journey of only nine days, he arrived in London on the 24th. It was too late to stop the bargain with Thurlow, and he at once informed Sheridan that he had swallowed the bitter pill and felt the utmost possible uneasiness about the whole matter.641

The Whigs now had a spy in the enemy’s citadel. At first Pitt was not aware of the fact. The holding of several Cabinet meetings at Windsor, for the purpose of sifting the medical evidence, enabled Thurlow to hear everything and secretly to carry the news to the Prince. Moreover, his grief on seeing the King—at a time when the Prince’s friends knew him to be at his worst642—was so heartrending that some beholders were reminded of the description of the player in “Hamlet”:

Such at least was the judgement of the discerning few, who, with Fanny Burney, saw more real grief in the dignified composure of Pitt after that inevitably painful interview. Authority to “inspect” the royal patient was entrusted to Thurlow, who thus stood at the fountain head of knowledge. Yet these astute balancings and bargainings were marred by the most trivial of accidents. After one of the Cabinet Councils at Windsor, Ministers were about to return to town, when Thurlow’s hat could not be found. Search was made for it in vain in the council chamber, when at last a page came up to the assembled Ministers and exclaimed with boyish frankness: “My Lord, I found it in the cabinet of His Royal Highness.” The flush which spread over the Chancellor’s wrinkled visage doubled the effect of the boy’s unconscious home-thrust.643

The question of the Regency has often been discussed on abstract constitutional grounds. Precedents were at once hunted up, namely, those of the years, 1326, 1377, 1422, and 1455, the last being considered on a par with the present case. But of course the whole question turned primarily on the probability of the King’s recovery. Here it should be noted that George III had been afflicted by a mental malady for a few weeks in the year 1765, and that a Regency Bill was drafted but the need for it vanished.644 This fact was not widely known, but it must have come to the knowledge of the Prince of Wales. In view of the sound constitution and regular life of the King, there were good grounds for hoping that he would a second time recover.

Nevertheless, the reports of Sir George Baker, on behalf of Dr. Warren and the other physicians, as sent to Pitt, were at first discouraging. As they have not before been published it will be well to cite them here almost in extenso from the Pitt Papers, No. 228. They are dated from the Queen’s Lodge, Windsor:

From the outset Pitt viewed the case with grave concern, but by no means hopelessly. This will appear from the following new letters of Pitt, the former to Bishop Pretyman (Tomline), the latter to the Marquis of Buckingham:

Grenville, a man of singularly calm and equable temperament (which procured for him the Speakership of the House of Commons on the decease of Cornwall early in the next year) waxed indignant as he described to his brother the tactics of the Opposition. On 20th November he declared: “The Opposition have been taking inconceivable pains to spread the idea that his [the King’s] disorder is incurable. Nothing can exceed Warren’s indiscretion on this subject.”648 The conviction gained ground that the Royal physicians were in league with the Prince; and so high did feeling run that shouts were flung at them—“So much the worse for you if he does not recover.” This exasperation of spirit waxed apace as the jubilation of the Prince’s friends became insolently patent. Indeed more terrible than the lunacy itself was the spectacle of the intrigues to which it gave rise.

As the reports privately sent to Pitt by the physicians were far from hopeless, he determined to await developments as long as possible before taking any decided step. On 12th November he proposed to the Prince of Wales that Parliament, instead of meeting in the following week, should be adjourned for a fortnight, to which there came a ready assent.649 On the 17th he asked leave to inform the Prince of what he proposed to do on the meeting of Parliament, but an interview was not accorded. Eight days later the Prince inquired whether he had any proposal to make, but was answered by a polite negative. The uneasy truce between them evidently neared its end.

In his resolve to sift to the bottom the nature of the disease and the probability of a cure, Pitt advised the calling in of his father’s doctor, Addington, and he carried his point. On the 28th and 29th the Prime Minister himself saw the Monarch, who was pleased to see him, referred to questions discussed at their last interview, and showed incoherence chiefly in wandering incessantly from one topic to another,650 a characteristic of the converse of polite Society, which, if judged severely, would warrant the consignment to Bedlam of half of its most cherished talkers.

All observers are agreed that the King conversed quite rationally at times, as was also the case in the attack of 1804.651 Pitt therefore resolved to do nothing which would distress the King in the event of his recovery. This it was which led him to decline all idea of a coalition with the Whigs, and to insist on restricting the authority of the Regent in regard to personal matters on which the King laid stress. The removal of the monarch to Kew House seems to have been the wish of the Prince as well as of the Cabinet; and it took place without mishap on 29th November.

Six days later Parliament re-assembled, and rarely has it had to face problems so novel and delicate. In contrast with other nations, England had been singularly free from the perplexities attendant on a Regency; but now she had to face them in an acute form. The monarch was not unpopular, and his heir was distrusted. Yet it was indisputable that, as Regent, he could choose his own Ministers; and his hatred of Pitt implied the dismissal of that Minister and the triumph of Sheridan, Fox, and the roystering set at Brooks’s. Pitt felt little doubt on this point and calmly prepared to resume his practice at the Bar. The sequel must have been a sharp conflict between the Prince’s friends and the nation; so that the fateful year 1789 would have seen the growth of a political crisis, less complex than that of France, it is true, but fully as serious as that from which the nation was saved by his timely decease in the summer of the year 1830. All this was at stake, and much more. For who shall measure the worth to the nation of the frugal and virtuous life of George III, and who can count up the moral losses inflicted on the national life by his son in his brief ascendancy?

The King’s physicians having been examined by the Privy Council on 3rd December, their evidence was laid before Parliament on the following day. While differing at many points, they agreed that recovery was possible or even probable, but they could not assign a limit of time. Adopting a suggestion of Fox, Pitt moved for the appointment of a Committee of the House for the examination of the physicians. It comprised twenty-one members selected from two lists suggested by the Ministry and the Opposition. The reading out of the final list led to a singular scene. Not much comment was made on the twenty names, but before reading out the last name, Pitt paused for a moment. At once the Opposition raised cries of “Burke.” Still Pitt remained silent. The cries were renewed more loudly. He then very quietly proposed Lord Gower. Burke threw himself back in his seat, crossed his arms violently, and kicked his heels with evident discomposure.652 The annoyance of the great Irishman was natural, as Pitt had evidently prepared to inflict the slight. The Upper House appointed a similar committee.

The report based on this inquiry was presented by Pitt to the House of Commons on the 10th. It comprised the evidence, not only of the royal physicians, but also of an outsider, the Rev. Dr. Francis Willis who, during twenty-eight years had supervised some 900 cases of lunacy at his residence near Boston. Everyone admitted his success in this trying work, which may be ascribed to the influence of a commanding personality, and the firm and judicious treatment which he substituted for the frequently violent methods then in vogue. He at once pronounced the case far from hopeless; and, if we may trust the stories told of the King and his new physician, there was even at the outset very much of method in the madness. Thus, on being informed that Willis was a clergyman, the patient remarked that he could not approve of his taking to the practice of medicine. This drew from Willis the remark that Christ went about healing the sick, whereupon the retort at once followed—“Yes; but I never heard that he had £700 a year for doing so.” The acuteness of the King’s faculties also appears in his remark that a letter which he had written to the Queen would not reach her, as his recent missive to the Duke of York had not been answered. Thereupon Willis offered to take it himself, and caused great joy to the sufferer by bringing back an affectionate letter in reply.

Yet the King soon felt the domination of his will. This appeared when the royal patient refused to go to bed. As the King petulantly resisted, Willis raised his voice in commanding tones which ensured complete submission. The trust which Willis reposed in the King led him to lengths that were sharply censured. When the sufferer expressed a desire to shave himself and complained that a razor and even a knife had been withheld from him, Willis at once replied that he was sure His Majesty had too strong a sense of what he owed to God and man to make an improper use of it. He therefore brought a razor, and kept the monarch under his eye until the growth of five weeks was removed. This tactful treatment speedily wrought a marked change. Willis was far more sanguine than the other attendants.653 In his evidence before the Committee on 9th December, he stated that the irritation was already subsiding, and that nine-tenths of his patients who had been similarly afflicted recovered, generally within three months from their first seizure.654

Willis’s words aroused the liveliest hopes. In vain did the Prince’s party and the physicians scoff at the assurance of the “quack” or “interloper.” The Queen and the nation believed in Willis; and his report greatly strengthened Pitt’s hands in dealing with the Regency. The more we know of the motives that influenced votes in Parliament the more we see that they turned on the opinions of the doctors. The desertion of the Duke of Queensberry to the Prince’s party was due to a long conversation which he had at Windsor with the pessimistic Dr. Warren.655

The conduct of the Prime Minister was cautious and tentative. On 10th December, after presenting the medical evidence, he moved the appointment of a committee to investigate precedents. At once Fox started to his feet and poured forth a vehement remonstrance. What need was there for such an inquiry? It was merely a pretext for delay. The heir-apparent was of mature age and capacity. He had as clear a right to take the reins of government and to exercise the sovereign power during the King’s illness as he would have in case of death. Parliament had only to determine when he had the right to exercise it; and as short a time as possible should elapse before the Prince assumed the sovereignty.

Here, as so often, Fox marred his case by his impetuosity. Pitt watched him narrowly, and remarked exultantly to his neighbour: “I’ll un-Whig the gentleman for the rest of his life.” With eyes flashing defiance, he denounced his assertions of the right of the Prince to assume the Regency as a breach of the constitution, implying as they did that the House could not even deliberate on the question. They must therefore in the first place assert their own rights.

Fox at once rose, not to soften, but to emphasize his previous statements. He questioned whether Parliament had the power of legislating at all until the royal power were made good. Now that the King had been admitted to be incapable, their assembly was a Convention, not a Parliament. He next asserted that the Regency belonged of right to the Prince of Wales during the civil death of the King; and “that it could not be more legally his by the ordinary and natural demise of the Crown.” This was tantamount to saying that English law recognized lunacy as death, in which case an heir could at once possess the property of a lunatic father, and a wife be divorced from an insane husband. Of course this is not so.656 Fox concluded by asserting that, if Parliament arrogated to itself the power of nominating the Regent, it would act “contrary to the spirit of the constitution and would be guilty of treason.”

Pitt, on the contrary, affirmed that the Prince had no such claim to the Regency as would supersede the right of either House to deliberate on the subject. He even ventured on the startling assertion that apart from the decision of Parliament “the Prince of Wales had no more right (speaking of strict right) to assume the government than any other individual subject of the country.”657 This phrase is generally quoted without the qualifying clause, which materially alters it. Pitt surely did not mean to deny the priority of the claim of the Prince, but rather to affirm the supreme authority of Parliament; the statement, however was undeniably over-strained. In the main he carried the House with him. In vain did Burke declaim against Pitt, styling him a self-constituted competitor with the Prince. “Burke is Folly personified,” wrote Sir William Young on 22nd December, “but shaking his cap and bells under the laurel of genius.”658 The sense of the House was clearly with the Prime Minister, and the committee of inquiry was appointed.

At the outset, then, Fox and his friends strained their contentions to breaking-point. In a technical sense their arguments could be justified by reference to the dead past; but they were out of touch with the living present. Fox himself had admitted that no precedent could be found for this problem. A practical statesman would therefore have sought to adapt the English constitution (which is a growing organism, not a body of rigid rules) to the needs of the present crisis. By his eager declarations he left this course open for Pitt to take; and that great parliamentarian took it with masterly power. He resolved to base his case on the decisions arrived at in the Revolution of a century earlier which had affirmed the ascendancy of Parliament in all questions relating to a vacancy in the Crown or a disputed succession. Men said that he was becoming a Republican, and Fox a Tory.659 Fortunately he had to do with singularly indiscreet opponents. After Fox had prejudiced the Prince’s cause, Sheridan rushed in to mar its prospects still further. In the debate of 12th December he ventured to remind Pitt of the danger of provoking the assertion of the Prince’s claim to the Regency. Never did Sheridan’s hatred of Pitt betray him into a more disastrous blunder.660 His adversary at once turned it to account:

We must here pause in order to notice the allegations of Mr. Lecky against Pitt. That distinguished historian asserted that the conduct of the Prime Minister towards the Prince “was from the first as haughty and unconciliatory as possible”; he claims that the plan of a Regency should have been submitted to the Prince before it was laid before Parliament; further, that, in defiance of the expressed wish of the Prince, “Pitt insisted on bringing the question of the Prince’s right to a formal issue and obtaining a vote denying it.”662 It is difficult to see on what grounds this indictment rests. Surely it was the duty of the Privy Council and Parliament first to hear the medical evidence and to decide whether the need for the Regency existed. That was the purport of the debate of 10th December, the details of which prove conclusively that it was Fox who first, and in a most defiant way, brought up the question of the Prince’s right to assume the Regency. Pitt, in a temperate and non-committal speech, had moved for a “Committee of Inquiry,” whereupon the Whig leader flung down the gauntlet for the Prince; and two days later Sheridan uttered his threat.663 Their auditors must have inferred that they acted with the sanction of Carlton House. In any case, the Prince’s friends, not Pitt, provoked the conflict. When the glove was twice cast down, the Prime Minister could do nothing else but take it up and insist on having that question disposed of; otherwise Parliament might as well have dissolved outright. We may admit, however, that the intemperate conduct of Fox and Sheridan led Pitt to assert the authority of Parliament with somewhat more stringency than the case warranted.

To the contention, that the Prince ought first to have been consulted on the proposed measure, I may reply that such a course would have implied his right to dictate his terms to Parliament; and that was the very question which Pitt wished to probe by the Committee of Inquiry. Further, the historian’s assertion, that Pitt laid the Regency plan before Parliament before submitting it to the Prince, is disproved by the contents of Pitt’s letter of 15th December, published in full by Bishop Tomline.664 In it the Prime Minister expressed his regret that his words and intentions had been misrepresented to His Royal Highness; for on several occasions he had offered to wait on him but had received an answer that he (the Prince) had no instructions for him. He denied the accuracy of the report that he was about on the morrow to submit to Parliament his plan for the Regency. His motion merely affirmed the right of Parliament to deliberate on the present emergency; but the course of the recent debate had compelled him to outline his ideas. They were these: that the Regency should be vested in the Prince, with the power of freely choosing his Ministers, unrestrained by any Council. He had declined, and begged still to decline, to detail the other powers, because the House might reject his opinions as to its right to deliberate on the present crisis. If he gained its approval, he would be honoured by the Prince’s permission to state to him the opinions which, after due inquiry, Ministers were able to form on the further proposals that might be submitted to Parliament.

Was this language “arrogant” and “unconciliatory”? Could a Minister show more tact in seeking to harmonize the functions of the monarchy and of Parliament? Far from bringing his scheme cut and dried before Parliament and then foisting it upon the Prince, Pitt was compelled by the attack of Fox to outline his plan in Parliament, but he stated his views to the Prince courteously, and at the earliest opportunity. The only other possible alternative was to allow the Prince to take the matter into his own hands and override the powers of Parliament. It is also noteworthy that not until the next day (16th December) did Pitt move three Resolutions on the subject, and these were of a preliminary character, affirming the right and duty of Parliament to take steps for meeting the present emergency.665

It should further be noted that the declaration of the Prince of Wales of his wish not to press his right was not made until the debate of 15th December in the House of Lords. The Duke of York, in a very tactful speech, said that his brother “understood too well the sacred principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives and their Lordships in Parliament assembled.”666 If Fox and Sheridan had treated the question in this way, there would have been no dispute. On the other hand the Prince does not seem to have sent a reply to the Prime Minister’s missive; and his discourtesy probably led to the discontinuance of further communications from Pitt until that of 30th December, soon to be noticed.

The debates in the House of Lords were generally of small interest. But that of 15th December was memorable, not only for the tactful speech of the Duke of York noticed above, but also for the astute balancings of Thurlow. By the middle of December that political Blondin had seen the need of retracing his steps. As has already appeared, Fox strongly disapproved of shelving Loughborough in order to win Thurlow; and the clamour of the Whig peer, added to the arguments of Fox, led the Prince of Wales to retract his promise to the Chancellor. Even this, perhaps, would not have turned him had he not come to believe that Warren was wrong and Willis was right. Discerning a balance of gain in favour of fidelity to the King, he played that part with an emotion peculiarly affecting in so rugged a nature. His shaggy eyebrows rose and fell with great solemnity, as he deprecated these discussions on the “right” of this or that member of the constitution. They should await the inquiry into the precedents of the case. Meanwhile their duty was to preserve the dignities of the monarch intact until he should recover. Feelings of loyalty and gratitude imposed that duty, and particularly on himself, the recipient of so many benefits, “which whenever I forget, may God forget me.”667 Two men who listened to that climax expressed their feelings with diverse emphasis. Pitt, who knew all but the latest developments of the Thurlow-Sheridan intrigue, exclaimed, “Oh! the rascal.” In Wilkes a sense of humour, unclouded by disgust, prompted the witticism: “Forget you! He’ll see you damned first.”

On 30th December, that is, seven days before the preliminary proposals for a Regency came before the House of Commons, Pitt drafted his suggestions in a most deferential letter to the Prince of Wales. In brief they were as follows. Ministers desired that the Prince should be empowered to exercise the royal authority, the care of the King and the control of his household being, however, vested in the Queen. The Regent, also, could not assign the King’s property, grant any office beyond His Majesty’s pleasure, or bestow any peerage except on the King’s children after attaining their majority—restrictions which merely registered the belief that the King’s illness was only temporary. At this time (the dawn of 1789) there were clear signs to this effect; and Willis drew up a report laying stress on his partial recovery; but, on his pressing Warren to sign it, the Whig practitioner refused.

Thus opened the most fateful of all years of modern history. The Whigs, the erstwhile guardians of popular freedom and the rights of Parliament, were straining every nerve to prove the King hopelessly insane, to foist upon the English people a hated Prince with unrestrained powers, as if Parliament had no voice in the matter, and to discredit the Prime Minister by representing his conduct as unconstitutional, and his letter to the Prince as insolent.

The best brains of the party were also concentrated on the task of inventing for the Prince a telling and dignified rejoinder. Political philosophy, law, and wit, came to his aid in the form of Burke, Loughborough, and Sheridan. Or, rather, the first two drafted the reply, which Sheridan then touched up. The brilliant Irishman pronounced the effusion of his sager compatriot “all fire and tow,” and that of the jurist “all ice and snow.” Fox, it seems, was to have revised the result; but the charms of Devonshire House on New Year’s Day detained “Sherry” far into the night; and the document, hastily copied by Mrs. Sheridan, was hurried off to Carlton House without the promised recension at Holland House or Brooks’s Club. Fox was furious at this neglect, and called his friend names which the latter preferred not to repeat to the Duchess.668

Such was this famous concoction. Connoisseurs, unaware of the facts, have confidently pronounced it the mellow vintage of Burke. Indeed, it is probable that the body of it may be his, while the bouquet may be Sheridan’s and the dregs Loughborough’s; but, the personal ingredients being unknown, it is useless to attempt a qualitative analysis. One thing alone is certain, that the Prince wrote not a word of it, but merely signed the fair copy when made out by Mrs. Sheridan. Thereupon the expectant Junto planned its public tapping, as an appetizing foretaste of the political wisdom of the new régime, Pitt meanwhile being dubbed a Republican and an insidious weakener of the executive power.

In more ways than one the situation was piquant. The volte face of parties was odd enough. Pitt seemed about to impair the strength of the hereditary principle and to exalt the power of Parliament; while the Whigs, who vehemently assailed the kingly prerogative in 1784, now as ardently belauded it in the person of the Prince. This contradiction extended even to details. Amidst all his appeals to precedents respecting a Regency, Pitt must in reality have resolved to discard them; and all research into the customs of the then almost absolute monarchy must have strengthened the case of those who scolded him for resorting to this device. But, in truth, all these inconsistencies vanish when we remember that the questions at issue were primarily medical and personal. Pitt’s whole policy was therefore one of delay.

Owing to the death of the Speaker, Cornwall, and the subsequent election of William Grenville as his successor, the debates on the Regency were not resumed until 6th January; and ten more days elapsed before other preliminary questions were disposed of and the ministerial proposals were laid before the House. They were in substance the same as those submitted to the Prince on 30th December, except that a Council was now suggested for the purpose of assisting the Queen in the guardianship of the King and the regulation of the royal household.669 It would be tedious to follow the course of the very lengthy debates which ensued. Ministers carried the Resolutions in both Houses; and the Prince somewhat grudgingly consented to act as Regent on the terms now proposed.

At the end of January Ministers proposed to legalize the proceedings of Parliament by the issue of letters patent under the Great Seal. A Commission was also appointed for the purpose of giving the royal assent and affixing the Seal to measures passed by the two Houses.670 In spite of a vehement protest by Burke, that he worshipped the gods of our glorious constitution, but would never bow down to Priapus (Thurlow), these proposals were carried. Not until 5th February were preliminaries disposed of; and Pitt then produced his Regency Bill. As it happened, the Opposition marred its own prospects by these dilatory tactics; for in a fortnight’s time it was known that the need for the Bill had vanished.

The importance of these debates centres in the treatment of a very complex question by the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox. The conduct of the former has been sufficiently outlined. It remains to say a few words on that of Fox. Few of his speeches are more ingenious than those on the Regency. As a forcible handling of a weak case they have few equals. But the House of Commons is rarely won over by a dazzling display of “tongue-fencing.” It demands to see the applicability of arguments to the needs of the time. This has been its peculiar excellence. Its deliberations are rarely lit up with the radiance of immortal truths; but they are suffused with the comforting glow of the domestic hearth. Fox forgot this. In contrast with the accepted Whig doctrine, he put forth claims which, if pressed to their natural conclusion, would have implied the restoration of monarchy of the pre-Revolution type. If it was true that the Prince of Wales could demand the Regency as a right, or even as a “legal claim,” free from all restrictions, how much more could the King govern independently of Parliament? A Regent is to a King what the moon is to the sun—a merely borrowed and temporary splendour. Apart, then, from an inconsistency of conduct highly damaging to a statesman, Fox committed the mistake of pledging himself to a scheme of government which was not only obsolete but unworkable.

Those who plod through the wearisome debates on the Regency must be conscious of an air of unreality. The references on both sides of the House to the cases of Edward VI or Henry VI were, after all, illusory; for in those times the powers of Parliament were ill defined. The nearest parallel to the present case was supplied by the events of 1688; and though pedants might appeal to certain forms observed by the Convention of that year, the significance of those events undoubtedly lay in the assertion of the supremacy of Parliament in all cases of a temporary lapse of the royal power. The argument for the supremacy of Parliament in all doubtful cases acquired redoubled strength from the Act of Settlement of 1701, which set aside hereditary right in favour of the House of Brunswick.

The arguments of Fox as to the inherent right of the Prince of Wales to the Regency must therefore be pronounced archaically interesting but inconclusive for any member of the reigning dynasty. The fact that they were adopted by the Irish Parliament adds nothing to their force; for that body was known to act more from corrupt motives or from opposition to George III and his Lord-Lieutenant, the Marquis of Buckingham, than from monarchical zeal.671

The divisions in the Parliament at Westminster were also much influenced by similar considerations. The numbers of those who went over to the Prince’s side were surprisingly large. Among the Peers, the cases of the Marquis of Lothian and the Duke of Queensberry attracted especial notice, as they had received many benefits from the King. Of those helped on by Pitt, Lord Malmesbury and Gerald Hamilton (commonly known as “Single-Speech” Hamilton) were the worst defaulters. The former, after calling on Pitt to assure him of his devotion, suddenly “ratted” to the Prince and sent a very lame letter of excuse. To this Pitt replied that he had certainly misunderstood every expression in their late interview, and begged his Lordship to act in any way he thought fit without troubling to send an apology.672 Malmesbury sought to appease his friend Carmarthen by offering to call and discuss things in the old way; but, if he had lost his esteem, he would prefer to retire and feed goats on a mountain “out of the reach of d—d Kings and d—d Regents.”673 What Carmarthen thought of the defaulters appeared in his witty reply to someone who asked how it came about that Fox had let the cat out of the bag so soon—“To catch the rats, I suppose.”

The pamphlet literature that sprang up at this crisis is highly interesting. The hacks employed by the Opposition persistently accused Pitt of aiming at dictatorial power—a theme on which they richly embroidered, despite the well-known fact that he was preparing to resume his position as a barrister. It is somewhat significant that, while the nation warmly supported Pitt, he was bitterly assailed by Grub Street and Soho. Anonymous writers confidently foretold his ascendancy and the ruin of England. “A few years, perhaps, and our boasted commonwealth may be numbered among the governments that cover the earth—the awful ruins of edifices once consecrated to the rights and happiness of the human kind.”674 A “Private Citizen” urged the drawing up of an address to the Prince begging him to take the full regal power as a “simple and obvious mode of restoring the constitutional government to its full vigour.”675 A flurried patriot declared that he knew of “but one alarming Regency, which is that of ambitious Ministers voting themselves in power.”676 Another citizen, surely of Jacobite tendencies, proved that no power in the universe could appoint a Regent; for he assumed that office solely by hereditary right. As for “Regent Ministers,” they would every day prostitute the dignity of the Crown in the animosities of debate, and the state of England would soon be worse than that of Poland.677 Similar in tone is an “Address to those Citizens who had resisted the Claim of the late House of Commons to nominate the Ministers of the Crown.” The writer asserts that only sophistry can deny that the sole question now is whether Pitt and his colleagues shall be invested with the regal authority with unlimited powers and for an indefinite period.678 These insinuations harmonize with those which Buckingham found in circulation at Dublin; that the King had long been insane, but Pitt had concealed the fact in order to govern without control; and that the plan of a restricted Regency was the outcome of the same lust for power.679

The falsity of these charges is obvious. Whether the Regency were a right or a trust, the Prince of Wales in the middle of February was about to become Regent; and if he chose to risk a conflict with Parliament he might at once dismiss Pitt and summon Fox to his counsels. On this all-important question there were no restrictions whatsoever. The restrictions solely concerned the relations between the Regent and the King, with two exceptions. These were the entrusting the Great Seal to a Commission, and the forbidding the Regent to create Peers except among the royal family; and here the aim obviously was to prevent the Prince obstructing legislation and swamping the House of Lords with his own nominees.

That the Prince did not dismiss Pitt was due, not to the lack of legal power to do so, but to the opportune recovery of the King. As appears by the reports of Dr. Willis, his health steadily improved throughout February. It is clear that Fox, who was drinking the waters at Bath, disbelieved the official bulletins on this subject and looked forward to a lease of power; for he wrote to Fitzpatrick on 17th February in terms of jubilation at the decision of the Irish Parliament, and added: “I hope by this time all idea of the Prince or any of us taking action in consequence of the good reports of the King are at an end: if they are not, do all you can to crush them.... I rather think, as you do, that Warren has been frightened. I am sure, if what I hear is true, that he has not behaved well.... Let me know by the return of the post on what day the Regency is like to commence.”680 From this it is obvious that the pessimism of Dr. Warren was not uninfluenced by political considerations.

The Prince was either better informed or more cautious than his favourite. On that same day a bulletin appeared announcing the King’s convalescence. The signatories included Dr. Warren, who speedily fell into disgrace with the Prince’s friends. On the 19th, at the request of the King, Thurlow had an interview with him and informed him of what had happened during his illness. We may be sure that the Chancellor’s narrative illustrated that power of language to conceal thought which Talleyrand held to be its choicest function. Thurlow, on his return to town, moved the adjournment of the debate on the Regency Bill, which proved to be the beginning of the end of that measure.

A still severer test of the King’s powers was afforded by his interview four days later with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The Queen was present the whole time, and political topics were of course avoided. Grenville asserts that after that interview the Princes drove straight to Mrs. Armstead’s house in Park Street in hopes of finding Fox there and informing him of the King’s condition. Certain it is that, according to Willis’s report to Pitt, “the Princes expressed great astonishment and satisfaction to Colonel Digby after their interview with the King, remarking only one or two trifling circumstances in which they thought His Majesty was not perfectly right. The King has been perfectly composed since, and his anxiety to see Mr. Pitt increases to that degree that probably Mr. Pitt will receive a message to that purport to-morrow morning.”681 Accordingly Pitt saw his sovereign on the 24th, and found him calm and dignified, without the slightest sign of flurry or disorder of mind. He spoke of his illness as a thing entirely past, and with tears in his eyes thanked all those who had stood by him. Even his emotion did not derange his faculties or mar his equanimity.682

Meanwhile at Westminster the Opposition sought to vie with their rivals in expressions of loyal joy at the King’s recovery. Viscount Stormont and other deserters to the Prince’s side hastened to avow their satisfaction; and the Duke of York displayed some skill in depicting the heartfelt joy which filled his heart and that of his royal brother—sentiments which they further proceeded to illustrate by plunging into a round of orgies.683 In the Commons Fox sought decently to draw a veil over the disappointment of his partisans.

The Providence which watches over the affairs of mortals sometimes wills that the dénouement of a problem shall come with dramatic effect. It was so now. The recovery of the King occurred in the very week to which the Prince’s friends were eagerly looking forward as the time of entry into his enchanted palace.684 Their chagrin, at the very moment when the paeans of triumph were on their lips, recalls the thrilling scene in “Paradise Lost,” where the fiends are about to acclaim Satan at the end of the recital of his triumph over mankind, and raise their throats for the shout of victory, when, lo, the sound dies away in