Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (19 page)

threw the nation into a constitutional crisis, the Prince’s capacity for

deception became the equivalent of his father’s mysterious illness—an

event that everyone knew and speculated about but that no one talked

veConnect - 2011-04-02

about publicly. His secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert was a decep-

algra

tion that cut two ways. He was probably deceiving a woman who

was functionally his mistress into believing that he would stand by a

marriage that was both unconstitutional and illegal. He was certainly

romso - PT

deceiving his Whig friends, particularly Fox, when he assured them

and allowed them to assure others that the marriage had never taken

lioteket i

place. For both of these parties, believing meant being cozened. By

the end of 1788, however, not many people believed in either the

sitetsbib

King’s sanity or his son’s bachelorhood.

The King’s Illness and the Crisis

of Representation

On October 17, 1788, King George became ill. His original symp-

toms were severe pain in his abdomen and limbs, difficulty in breath-

ing, rapid and irregular heartbeat, occasionally dark or discolored

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

urine, and a skin rash. As the weeks progressed, he developed chronic

insomnia and began to exhibit signs of mental derangement. He

.palgra

talked rapidly and without cessation for hours; he slept rarely; he was

extremely agitated, sometimes violent, and he was increasingly delu-

om www

sional. He believed that London was under threat of a catastrophic

flood and that he needed to retrieve a valuable manuscript from

the coming deluge; he believed that he was married to the Queen’s

Lady of the Bedchamber, Lady Pembroke, and he attacked his eldest

yright material fr

son (Macalpine and Hunter 14–25, 41, 79; Ayling 331–32, 334).

Cop

By December, seven physicians attended the King, none of whom

could satisfactorily explain the cause of his illness or offer a plausible

prognosis.

The King’s illness was baffling. The symptoms ranged all over his

body, comprehending his pulmonary, circulatory, digestive, and ner-

vous systems. His mental derangement seemed at first to accompany

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 65

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 65

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

66

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

his physical symptoms but continued and increased after most of those

had improved, making it difficult to establish whether the King was

ill or mad. For a century and a half after his death, most historians

believed it was the latter. In the 1960s, however, two psychiatrists,

Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, posited that the King’s diffuse

set of symptoms might all be traced to the rare hereditary metabolic

disorder known as porphyria. They suggested that the illness had

come into the House of Hanover by way of the Stuarts, beginning

with Mary, Queen of Scots, and that the King passed it to several

of his offspring, including the Prince of Wales. Royal biographers

embraced the theory, although the reactions of the medical commu-

veConnect - 2011-04-02

nity ranged between caution and skepticism. The diagnosis explained

algra

a great deal, but the data was partial and easily misinterpreted. More

recently, however, John C. Röhl, Martin Warren, and David Hunt

have argued that the evidence, while circumstantial, is still compel-

romso - PT

ling, although they acknowledge that it must always remain a ten-

tative diagnosis. Information taken from letters and diaries of the

lioteket i

royal family and their physicians suggests not only that the King had

an illness for which porphyria provided a remarkably comprehensive

sitetsbib

explanation but also that he passed on his condition to almost all

of his thirteen surviving children, who suffered from symptoms that

are traceable to variegate porphyria. These included “spasms, colic

and cramps, sharp headaches, lameness and brachial weakness, pain

in the chest, back and side, biliousness, vomiting and constipation,

breathlessness, irregularity of the pulse, inflammation and fragility

of the skin, mental disturbance and, in one or two cases, discoloured

urine” (
Purple Secret
103).14 Porphyria was not identified as a meta-

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

bolic disorder, however, until the 1930s.15 Although some contem-

poraries (Walpole among them) traced at least a few of these common

.palgra

symptoms to a family malady, only the King appeared to suffer from

derangement.16

om www

A king who, at fifty, was mysteriously ill and then apparently mad

posed problems not only of interpretation and diagnosis. His medical

attendants knew that their reports would affect the Queen’s and the

nation’s peace of mind, as well as the health of the economy. The King

yright material fr

became ill in mid-October; by mid-November the stocks were falling

Cop

(Macalpine and Hunter 34, Ayling 336), and the opposition Whigs

began agitating for the establishment of a regency. Consequently, his

doctors were more cautious in reporting on the King’s illness than

they were in treating it.17 They knew that the Queen, the Prince of

Wales, the ministers, and the nation were scrutinizing everything they

wrote with competing interests. They were, moreover, “frightened by

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 66

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 66

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

W a n d e r i n g R o y a l s

67

and of their unmanageable sovereign and his unpredictable behav-

iour,” and by the worry that he “was likely to see their reports in the

papers—if not at the time then surely if he recovered.” And “above all

else loomed the remorseless fact that they did not . . . know what was

the matter with their patient” (Macalpine and Hunter 38–39). The

physicians issued no public bulletins about the King’s health for the

first month of his illness. When they appeared,18 reports were brief

and noncommittal, stating, for example, that His Majesty had had a

“restless” night or that he continued to suffer from “fever,” a catchall

term for rapid pulse, agitation, or delirium.19

The Prince convened a meeting of cabinet ministers on

veConnect - 2011-04-02

November 27. The ministers took statements from the King’s physi-

algra

cians, who then met with the Privy Council on December 3. When

Parliament reassembled the next day each House established a com-

mittee to examine the doctors separately. By the time of the first

romso - PT

examination by the Commons, the team of physicians included

Dr. Francis Willis, the celebrated “mad-doctor,” who was, from first

lioteket i

to last, optimistic about the King’s recovery. The doctors gradually

formed two groups: those who thought the King’s malady incur-

sitetsbib

able—a case of insanity—and those who maintained his derange-

ment was due to his physical illness and would subside when that

did. In contemporary terms, the question was whether the King suf-

fered from “consequential” or from “original” madness. And on this

question the case for a regency hung: “ ‘Original Madness,’ otherwise

mania or insanity, was considered not amenable to art, spontaneous

recovery from it was uncommon and its course was therefore pro-

longed; whereas ‘Consequential Madness,’ delirium and derange-

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

ment, could be expected to subside with the underlying condition”

(Macalpine and Hunter 57). Willis maintained that the King’s mad-

.palgra

ness was consequential. His chief opponent was Dr. Richard Warren,

physician to the Prince of Wales, who, not surprisingly, took the posi-

om www

tion most favorable to the establishment of an unlimited regency.

Although more cautious than Willis, Warren gave answers that were

equivocal but could easily be interpreted as inclining toward a diag-

nosis of original madness. In private, he was more direct. As early

yright material fr

as mid-November, he wrote in a letter to the staunchly Whig Lady

Cop

Spencer, mother of the Duchess of Devonshire, “
Rex noster insanit
”

(quoted in Ayling 333).

The regency crisis raised problems of representation. Information

was fought over, corrected, and sometimes reversed before being

released to the public.20 One of the more memorable instances of

public doublespeak was Fox’s speech before the House of Commons

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 67

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 67

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:25 PM

68

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

on December 10. His efforts to bring about a regency that he hoped

would establish the primacy of his party led him to argue passion-

ately for hereditary monarchy—the “express . . . right” of the “Heir

Apparent” to “assume the reins of government, and exercise the

power of sovereignty” (
History and Proceedings
12–13). This was

an odd position for a leader of the radical Whigs, a supporter of

American independence and Catholic emancipation, and a lifelong

opponent of monopolist monarchy. Fox had greeted with enthusiasm

Dunning’s famous motion before the same House, eight years earlier,

that “The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and

ought to be diminished” (Mitchell 33), and his short-lived coalition

veConnect - 2011-04-02

with Lord North in 1783–84 had been grounded on the principle

algra

that executive power and the royal prerogative should be checked and

managed by the legislature. He was one of the least likely members

to champion the inherent and inherited right of monarchs to govern,

romso - PT

and Pitt and the other Tories made much political capital out of this

backpedaling in the debates that followed. Fox had, of course, solid

lioteket i

pragmatic reasons for saying what he said. If the Prince were made

regent with the power to choose his ministers, the Whigs would be in

sitetsbib

power, and he was certain of a position in the new cabinet, most likely

as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

For Fox, the advancement of his political interests meant depend-

ing on a patronage system he had spent his career fighting, while try-

ing to obscure his about-face. It also meant defending the abilities of

a Prince as unfit to govern as his ailing father. When Pitt declared on

December 16 that “he was ready to acknowledge the greatest and best

qualities in the present Heir Apparent” (
History and Proceedings
48),

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

he was making a statement similar to Fox’s a week earlier that there was

“a great prospect and a strong probability of [the King’s] recovery”

.palgra

(14). Neither speaker was saying what he believed.21 Behind public

assertions of confidence in either the King or the Prince lay the fear

om www

that neither option was viable. Both the monarch in situ and the heir

apparent were possibly incapacitated—the former by a mysterious ill-

ness that was looking increasingly like permanent insanity, the latter

by a reputation for irresponsibility and insolvency that was, at age

yright material fr

twenty-six, looking more like a permanent state than an extended

Cop

adolescence.22

By the time of his father’s illness, the Prince had been in mounting

debt for all of his adult life.23 His extravagance, heavy drinking, and

multiple mistresses were common knowledge.24 Of greater political

concern was the possibility that he had secretly married a Catholic

widow, in defiance of the Constitution and his father’s mandate.

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian