Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (47 page)

Finally, as a matter of duty, the Duke of Wellington agreed to head a new government. Faced with a hostile House of Commons, he was forced to resign within weeks. William had no alternative; he asked Grey to assemble an administration and to present a less radical Reform Bill. Grey accepted on condition that enough peers were created to ensure success. After some delay, William reluctantly agreed.

When the lords heard this, they knew that the game was up. Rather than allow commoners to join them in the House of Lords, most of those against reform merely failed to attend the votes. The Lords passed the ‘Great’ Reform Bill with only 22 voting against, while the peers fumed and the King sulked. As a result, 20% of adult males had the vote. Unrest disappeared, the mood subdued as an epidemic of cholera killed 20,000 people.

It was June 1832. As in every year, the King and Queen travelled the short distance from Windsor to Ascot for the fourday festival – the Royal Meeting. After the first race, William and Adelaide were in the royal box talking to friends. About 20 yards away, an elderly man took careful aim and hurled a smooth flint stone, about the size of an egg, at William. It struck him on the forehead.

William staggered backwards and fell to the ground, shouting out: “Oh my God, I am hit!”, believing that he had been shot. Then another stone was hurled, but it did not hit anyone. Fortunately, William was wearing a hat, and the stone had hit it before deflecting on to his forehead. The hat had absorbed much of the force of the stone, and for that reason William suffered nothing more than mild concussion and severe bruising.

The elderly man was seized and taken away. He was wearing a tattered sailor’s uniform and had a wooden leg. Questioning revealed that he was an Irishman named Dennis Collins, who had served in the navy aboard HMS Kangaroo and HMS Atlanta. On the second ship, there had been an accident when stowing the booms, and it had been necessary to amputate Collins’s left leg.

Collins’s story was that on being invalided out of the navy, he had been granted a pension of £10 a year. He had later been admitted as a resident at Greenwich Hospital. Board and food being provided, his pension was naturally suspended. He had then been expelled from the hospital for making a minor complaint, and his pension had not been restored. The King had rejected a petition to restore Collins’s pension, and Collins had come to Ascot to seek revenge.

Investigations revealed a different story. Collins had indeed been admitted to Greenwich Hospital for four years. He had left voluntarily and his pension had been restored. Then he found a job as a cook in Halifax, but was dismissed for misconduct. Having returned to Greenwich Hospital, he continually caused trouble, and was expelled for disorderly and disgraceful behaviour. His pension was restored. Collins was once more employed as a cook, only to be dismissed for striking an officer. He was again admitted to Greenwich Hospital, leaving voluntarily and having his pension restored. Admitted to Greenwich for a fourth time, he was expelled after a year for disgraceful behaviour. Yet again, his pension was restored. He was admitted to Greenwich for a fifth time, and was expelled for riotous conduct. Now, his pension was forfeited.

Collins was tried at Berkshire Assizes for treason. The charge was that he had attempted to kill the King, which the prosecution said is what Collins had planned to do, and what would have happened if the King’s hat had not cushioned the impact. Collins was found guilty of intending to do bodily harm, intending to wound or maim His Majesty; a capital offence. He was sentenced to be hanged until dead, his head to be severed and the body to be quartered. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Collins was taken to the penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land (now called Tasmania), one of nearly 7,000 convicts sent to Australia that year.

On arrival at the penal colony, Collins was insubordinate and rebellious, but the terrible conditions and the brutal punishments quietened him down. Within a year of his arrival, Collins died. He starved to death, having said that he “would neither do the King’s work, nor eat the King’s bread”.

Back at Ascot, it was decided to build a royal enclosure so that in future royalty could be kept a safe distance from commoners.

In 1833, Parliament abolished slavery in most British territories; it had never been lawful in Britain, and slave trading had been outlawed in 1807. Then the Factory Act banned the employment of children aged under nine in factories, and limited the working hours of older children and women. With those achievements, Prime Minister Grey retired. Yet he is better known for the tea that bears his name – a tea flavoured with oil from the rind of the bergamot orange, made under a formula said to have been given by Earl Grey to Jacksons of Piccadilly.

Attention now turned to the Continent, with Britain’s foreign policy being directed by Lord Palmerston, the enemy of despotic monarchies. However, Palmerston was no liberal at home. Years later he would say: “I deny that every sane and not disqualified man has a moral right to vote. What every man and woman too have a right to, is to be well governed and under just laws …” Presumably, the ruling classes would determine whether they were well governed and whether the laws were just.

As far as other countries were concerned, Palmerston was unbending. When Belgium gained independence they of course needed a king, and William favoured the Prince of Orange. The Belgians elected the son of the King of France. Palmerston would not have either of them, and he saw to it that Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widower of Princess Charlotte, was offered the Belgian throne.

Next it was Austria and the German states with their autocratic rulers. Palmerston disapproved of the repressive measures imposed by the reactionary Austrian Chancellor, Metternich. But William, as King of Hanover, would not support Palmerston, quite the opposite. So Metternich had his way.

Portugal had a different problem. The barbaric King Miguel had seized the throne from his niece, Maria (the only European monarch not to have been born in Europe – she was born in Rio de Janeiro). William took Miguel’s side, but Palmerston provided Maria with the assistance of the navy, and Miguel was forced to abdicate. Spain was wracked with civil war. In a similar situation to Portugal, in Spain Don Carlos had seized the throne from his niece, Isabella. With the intervention of British troops, Isabella recovered the throne.

So, in Belgium, Portugal and Spain, William had backed the repressive candidates, but in each case Palmerston ensured that monarchs offering a more liberal constitution succeeded. In Austria and the German states, Palmerston was overruled, so those states lurched further to the right.

At home, there was a problem with the Duchess of Kent, mother of the heir to the throne. Although William and Adelaide had comforted the Duchess when her husband died, as soon as William took the throne, the Duchess terminated the friendship. She now considered that as the mother of the infant heir, she was regent-in-waiting and was to be treated with high regard.

William and Adelaide had no surviving children of their own, and they treated their niece with considerable affection. When the Duchess saw this, she decided that she could use her daughter to advantage. The Duchess was supported in her plans by the scheming Sir John Conroy, her comptroller (superviser of her finances). He had his eyes on power when William died. First the Duchess stopped her daughter from visiting the King and Queen on the pretext that she might come into contact with the illegitimate Fitzclarences, whom the Duchess always snubbed. Then she stopped Alexandrina from attending William’s coronation, the Duchess (as so-called regent-in-waiting) refusing to acknowledge Queen Adelaide’s precedence.

When William’s popularity collapsed in the reform crisis, the Duchess and her daughter embarked on a series of progresses around the country, the Duchess letting it be known that she was in favour of reform. So it went on. Having refused to attend the Queen’s birthday party, the Duchess and Alexandrina did attend the King’s birthday party. In his speech, William declared that his last ambition was to live for another nine months, until his niece’s eighteenth birthday, so that “a person now near to me … herself incompetent to act with propriety” would not become regent.

William achieved that last ambition. On 24th May 1837, Alexandrina celebrated her eighteenth birthday. By then William was already very unwell, his heart hardened and his liver swollen, his breathing difficult because of asthma. He died on the morning of 20th June, Queen Adelaide (after whom the Australian city is named) at his side, where she had sat continuously for ten days.

A reign of only seven years, but one that had seen the abolition of slavery, the great reform of Parliament, similar reform of local government and legislation on factory employment. Those liberalising enactments helped to save Britain from the revolutions that would sweep through Europe during the nineteenth century. Of course, William had been against all the changes, but he had backed them in the end in what he saw as his duty to support his ministers. As he said, “I have my view of things, and I tell them to my ministers. If they do not adopt them I cannot help it, I have done my duty.” It was an arrangement that allowed the monarchy to survive – it still does.

If Dennis Collins had been successful in his assassination attempt, the Duchess of Kent would have been the Regent, and, having been brought up in a German state, she would probably not have adopted such a relaxed attitude towards the monarch’s, or the regent’s, powers.

The Duke of Kent wanted to name his daughter after her two godfathers, Tsar Alexander I of Russia and the Regent, the future King George IV. She would be called Alexandrina Georgiana. The Regent stopped him, saying that in Britain the name ‘George’ could not be second to any other name; so the Duke replaced Georgiana with his wife’s name, Victoria.

Throughout her childhood, the Duke’s daughter was called ‘Drina’ by her family. On the day she succeeded to the crown, numerous official documents were put before her for signature. Expected to reign as Queen Alexandrina Victoria, she signed ‘Victoria’; and that was how it would remain.

Victoria’s father received his military training in Germany, and he was later appointed Governor of Gibraltar. He treated his soldiers so harshly that they mutinied, and the Duke was recalled. In England, he joined the race to produce an heir to the crown, and he married Princess Marie Louise Viktoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld; she was the sister of Prince Leopold, the widower of George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte.

Years before that, on the death of her aunt, it had been arranged for the 17-year-old Princess Viktoria (she used her third name) to marry her late aunt’s 40-year-old husband, and she bore him two children – to be Queen Victoria’s half-brother and half-sister. Princess Viktoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld’s husband/uncle died, and four years later she married the Duke of Kent. Alexandrina Victoria was born one year later.

After less than two years of marriage, the Duke of Kent died, and the Duchess was left with nothing but debts and £300 a year. Impoverished and unable to speak English, she decided against returning to Coburg; she gambled all on her daughter’s succession, and remained in England. Fortunately, the Duchess’ brother Leopold had an income of £50,000 a year, given to him by Parliament at a time when he was expected to become consort to Charlotte, so he was able to help. As Alexandrina came nearer to the throne, the Duchess was given an income by Parliament, but she remained bitter about the way she had been treated.

Young Alexandrina’s upbringing was miserable and lonely as the Duchess and her comptroller and secretary, Sir John Conroy, prepared to take power through Alexandrina. They were encouraged by the Regency Act, which appointed the Duchess as regent should her daughter become queen before the age of eighteen.

Conroy enforced a strict set of rules regulatingAlexandrina’s life. She was not allowed to attend court, could not have friends other than Conroy’s daughter, had to sleep in her mother’s room and was never allowed to be apart from one of her mother, her tutor or her governess. Alexandrina was brought up almost as a recluse, everything possible being done to develop her into a weak woman, totally compliant with Conroy’s will.

As Alexandrina grew older and William IV showed no sign of dying, the Duchess and Conroy started to get nervous; once Alexandrina reached the age of eighteen there would be no regency. Then, in 1835, Alexandrina fell ill with typhoid. Now the two plotters (said to be lovers) saw their chance. Like vultures they sat at Alexandrina’s bedside, and they tried to force her to sign a document appointing Conroy as Alexandrina’s private secretary and treasurer after her accession. Somehow she found the strength to resist; she refused to sign.

There was a temporary relaxation when Alexandrina’s uncle, Ernest Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (the Duchess’ and Leopold’s older brother), visited England with his sons, Ernest and Albert. Victoria was unimpressed with Albert, who fell asleep during a ball.