Alice Audrey

Take it away, Mr. Al.

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Parliament of the Georgian period was not for the faint of heart or the quite thinker. It was the age of the orator, and Charles James Fox was, and still is, considered one of the best that institution has ever seen. Charles was the second son of the 1st Lord Holland, Henry Fox and that prolific diarist, letter writer and free spirit, Caroline Lennox. (WARNING, BOOK ENDORSEMENT! If you would like to read about this fascinating woman, and her sisters, pick up a copy of “The Aristocrats” By Stella Tillyard.) Like his father, Charles was a born politician. Also like his father, he enjoyed high living and fast friends. Not unnaturally, he and the Prince were very much in sync.

One of the things these two gentlemen shared was a loathing of George the Thirds reactionary ministers. Earning the sobriquet “Champion of the People”, Charles stayed close to the Prince not only because of their shared hobbies. The Prince was the last, best hope of the Whig party. And the only hope of getting the Prince on the throne was keeping him out of political hot water.

Fox and the Prince were two peas in a pod in many respects; many of them negative. All of them negative as far as the King was concerned. If his son was making his life miserable, Fox was on hand to make sure the situation stayed that way. What the King could not comprehend was that the popularity of men like Fox was a direct result of his own ham-fisted policies.

King George the Third, particularly toward the middle of his long reign, had become adept enough at politics to run with his own agenda. Not that he wanted to. He wanted nothing more than to enjoy the country air and not have to worry about anything that did not involve babies or making babies.

But no. He kept appointing walking disasters like Lord North, which not only forced him to deal with issues he would rather not have dealt with, but also associated the King personally with some of the most repressive, reactionary legislation in English history. One of his more famous notions was to call out the army to beat those ungrateful American colonists into submission. Bad Idea.

In a typical George the Third touch, he undermined the morale of the British troops by hiring German mercenaries. Not only were these guys well paid, they had much better food, better uniforms, better equipment, better everything. And the German officers were under no obligation to obey British officers if the Germans thought they were wrong. Unfortunately, because he felt he was King by the Will of God, he was invariably right all the time.

He rarely was, but he never saw it that way. Hence, men like Fox could do a land office business stirring up trouble. Had the King been a more intelligent, and perhaps more importantly, a more pragmatic man, he would not have found himself so consistently wrong-footed by Whigs like Fox.

But I digress. The day finally arrived when the Prince had to have his own establishment. Considering what a botched job the King did keeping sonny-boy on a short leash while living at home, one would think that Their Majesties would have leaped at the chance to boot the rascal out. Nope, not at all.

The Prince had been clamoring for his own crib since he was eighteen. God knows he was already living like he was on his own. Dad’s invariable response was to reduce his allowance and add another layer of unenforceable rules. This, in turn, not only made the Prince seem an ever more irredeemable scofflaw for breaking the new rules, but drove him further into debt by forcing him to borrow money from an ever-widening circle of people who hoped that having the Prince of Wales in their debt would pay off with dividends after he became king.

Those two! Someone should have locked them in a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they had either made up, or one of ’em was dead. Anyway, at age 21, the Prince of Wales got his own bachelor pad. Carlton House, by name. The year was 1782 and the relationship between Fox and the Prince was just hitting its stride.

For one thing, with his own home, the Prince now gave the opposition a geographical focus. Dinner parties at Carlton House would become synonymous with undermining the government. Or at least twisting the Kings tail. Pretty much the same thing as far as his Majesty was concerned. To add insult to injury, the man chosen by the government to negotiate the Prince’s new allowance to maintain a separate establishment was none other that Charles James Fox.

It was the Kings fault. After backing one Tory flat tire after another, the King was forced to recognize a new Whig government under Lord Rockingham. His Lordship wasted no time in securing his ally a powerful position in the new government. That’s what friends are for. Fox, in his turn, didn’t beat around the bush in getting the best deal he could for the Prince.

The previous administration had led the Prince to believe that once he was on his own he would receive 100,000 pounds a year. Even today that’s real money. Back then, it was the jackpot. The Prince had every reason to believe it was a done deal. After all, A Tory government had recommended the sum. How could the King say no just because the Whigs were now in power?

The Prince also had historic precedent. His grandfather had received that sum when he moved out on his own. The Prince was confidant that he would soon be rolling in it. Dad had other ideas. His counter offer was 50,000 pounds plus the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, an additional 12 to 14,000 pounds. Along with the counter-offer, the King sent along a characteristically testy letter to his wayward offspring.

So writeth the King,  “The Prince of Wales on the smallest reflection must feel that I have little reason to approve of any part of his conduct for the last three years. That his neglect of every religious duty is notorious; his want of common civility to the Queen and me, no less so; besides his total disobedience of every injunction I have given and which he, in presence of his brother and the gentlemen then about them both, declared himself contented with. I must hope he will now think it behooves him to take up a fresh line of conduct more worthy of his station.”

Thanks, dad.

***

Thank you Mr. Al.  I’m beginning to see the way of things here. 

                                                          ****

For one thing, it meant that he could be easily persuaded by those closest to him. If he were hanging out with the usual rakehells, the result would likely go up in the next day’s papers and cause some more embarrassment. If, however, those closest to him happened to be the Kings political opponents, that was another tankard of ale altogether.

And the Prince, simply by virtue of being the Prince, attracted dads opponents like a dead fish attracts flies. This did suit the Prince. He needed money and he could never hope to get it in the amounts he wanted without political help. Besides, it was almost a law of nature that the Prince of Wales would be for whatever the King was against.

Dad was a Tory of the most reactionary kind. Not so surprising, really. The Prince, therefore, was a Whig. Not the most extreme variety of that species to be sure, but he could strike the pose when called upon to do so. Nothing struck fear into the callused hearts of the kings Tory ministers like the vision of the Lesser Sorts becoming politically organized.

In a perverse way it made life simpler for everyone. Not more enjoyable, but definitely simpler.

The problem with a tool as malleable as the Prince was keeping him on message. As mentioned earlier, the Prince was not stupid, but keeping his attention on one thing long enough for him to grasp the details was a daunting task.

It didn’t help that he had no real interest in politics. At least politics that didn’t involve increasing his allowance or voting him money to pay off his debts. It also did not help that the Prince was a post-dated check, so to speak. His political value came from what he could deliver to potential placeholders once he became king. Or Regent.

As long as dad sat on the throne with his wits intact, the Prince wielded no political power whatsoever. Actually, that’s not entirely true.  He did wield negative political power. He could not help those Whig politicians who sought lucrative posts within government, but he could do his bit to help the Whigs thwart their Tory opponents.

So the Prince had nuisance value. And no one appreciated this more than that jolly old statesmen, Charles James Fox. I shall try not to stray too far off the track with some of these other political persons. It would be an easy thing indeed to run off on a tangent about the movers and shakers of the day. The Georgian period, the Regency in particular, was just chock full of colorful characters.

That said, one cannot talk about the Prince without talking about fellows like Fox. Without Fox, the Prince would have found himself in very deep water. While the Prince did inject himself into some issues that did not touch on him personally, he was, by and large, absent from the political stage. And I do mean stage.

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I get the feeling old Georgie boy would feel right at home on the stage.  Didn’t he throw himself on his mother’s feet last week?  And faint upon confessing his transgressions?  Imagine him in the middle of parliament!  Oh boy.

Thank you Mr. Al.  Please put some calluses on your fingertips and write me some more.

Alice