King George IV: A Re-appraisal, Part I

It would be fair to say that no British sovereign, since 1688, has suffered so bad a press, in general literature or in history proper, as George IV.

His unenviable reputation was acquired during a period in which the moral or nursery-schoolroom version of English history was crystallizing fast.

Thrift, uxoriousness and hard work were the cardinal admirations of the mid-nineteenth century and it must be admitted that the Prince Regent excelled in none of them. His extravagance was proverbial, his treatment of his wife an historic scandal; he toiled not, neither did he spin.

He was an unbounded liar, a heartless father, a fashionable corpulence in stays, an unconscionable imbiber of cherry brandy. He was the First Cad in Europe, a Turveydrop Major whom Dr. Keate would have lashed purple, but whom Dr. Arnold, so it was felt, would have expelled on the spot.

Thackeray, in his lecture, summed up the mid-Victorian attitude when he told his audience that,