By George! He’s Incensed!

.George IV’s taste in women wasn’t the only place in which he displayed dubious judgment.
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Mr Canning was well pleased with the services he was able to render on behalf of His Majesty. The King had been deeply upset over the loss of Lord Liverpool; Canning’s willingness to accommodate the Crown on a number of issues important to the King personally went a long way in easing His Majesties mind. One letter from Canning to the King illustrates this very well.

“Mr Canning, although quite ashamed to trouble your Majesty with a third letter on the same day, cannot forbear humbly requesting of your Majesty that you would be graciously pleased to let him know if there be any person in whom your Majesty takes an interest, whom your Majesty would wish to be appointed to a Consulship in Spanish America.”

What a helpful fellow!

As far as the Tories were concerned, he was too helpful by half. His Majesty came to rely on Mr Canning more and more. This, although the King chose to ignore it as much as he could, was undermining the traditional support of the Tory Party for the Crown. The issue of Catholic emancipation was becoming a political crisis.

The right wing Tories, the Ultras, were incensed against Canning because of his support for it. Many of them, including the Duke of Wellington, were even more incensed against the King because he was incensed against the right wing Tories for being incensed against his great chum Canning. Wrote Lord Howard de Walden; “There never was anything like the bitterness of the Ultras against Mr Canning.”

The King was on a slippery slope. Politically, who could he turn to but the Tories? The Whigs were not going to do things the way His Majesty wanted them done. Dad had never given the Tories a sleepless night. True, George III had chosen Tory Ministers of VERY dubious utility, Lord North comes to mind, but he never broke ranks with the Party. George IV thought, because he was King, he would get what he wanted in the end…he really should have known better.

For all the King’s protestations that he was solemnly bound by his Coronation Oath to uphold the Protestant faith, the Ultras were having none of it. If that was the way His Majesty really felt, why did he keep a Catholic-lover like Canning on?

Canning was willing to form an exclusively Tory government. The Tories were not willing to serve under him. And they didn’t. They resigned en-mass. Canning assured the King that he would not press for Catholic emancipation if asked to form a government. The King passed this on to the Tories, who didn’t believe it for a moment. They were right. Canning knew the score as well as they did, he was just trying to buy time in the hope of persuading the King to let him have a free hand with the issue at some future date.

Wellington, Peel, Westmoreland, Bathhurst, Eldon and Melville all stepped down. The Duke of Dorset and the Duke of Montrose resigned from the Household Staff, as did several others. Canning was forced to appoint a “Whiggish” Cabinet. Which, of course, re-enforced what the Tories believed would happen all along.

Canning’s position was not good. The Tories didn’t trust him in the least. The Whigs, while not “incensed” against him, found him too chummy with the Tories for their liking. There were Whigs who were willing to serve, mainly for the chance to work against the Ultras, but there were many more who were not. Both sides were convinced that Canning was a lame duck. It was only a matter of time before His Majesty realized what a liability he was and asked him to step down.

Anyone serving under him would find their political career in the remainder bin. Those who did work with Canning came to be referred to as the “warming pans.” Said Lady Cowper; “The Morning Chronicle says it is like people going to keep places for the first act of a play.” If all this was damaging the King politically, it was damaging Canning physically. The stress of keeping the King happy, running the government and trying to find a workable solution to Catholic emancipation that would suit both parties was on Canning’s shoulders almost exclusively.

In July, 1827 the Duke of Devonshire invited Canning to Chiswick to get out of the political pressure cooker of London for a bit. While there he complained of feeling un-well. He wrote to the King that he had no idea what was wrong, but he felt “ill all over.” A week later, he was dead. Toward the end he was heard to say; “This may be hard upon me, but it will be harder upon the King.”

He was right.

– Mr. Al