On Wednesday, February 6, 1811, Prince George took the oath at Carton House that allowed him to become the Prince Regent.
At 48, the prince was no longer the dashing young man once dubbed “Prince Florizel” (due to his affair with the actress Mary Robinson, who had had the lead as Perdita, opposite Florizel, in Shakespear’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’). He had begun putting on weight in the late 1700s, and by 1811, years of heavy drinking and eating meant a need for corsets and face paint. (By 1797, his weight had reached 245 pounds, or 17 stone 7 pounds, and in the 1820s his corset would be sized to a 50 inch waist. Just for breakfast, it was reported he liked: ‘Two pigeons and three beefsteaks, three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of dry Champagne, two glasses of Port and a glass of Brandy’.)
The Care of King During his Illness, etc. Act had been passed by Parliament the day before the Prince took the oath, creating a limited regency (the full text of the act can be found online at: https://www.heraldica.org/topics/royalty/ukregency.htm#1811),
The London Chronicle of Wednesday, February 6 carried information on what would be called ‘the Regency Bill’ with a postscript that the Prince Regent had been sworn in at two o’clock, and the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, had been able to have an interview with the 72-year-old King the previous Friday. At that time, the King was well enough to understand a regency was required. The King requested no change to the ministers or government, and Queen Charlotte also noted she also required those terms to be met. The Prince Regent would not be allowed to grant peerages, or confer lifetime offices, places or pensions for a year, just in case the King recovered. The King’s care was given to Queen Charlotte. She also retained the management of his household and property and she did so until her death at Kew Palace, where the King also lived, on November 17, 1818 at 74 years of age.
In early February 1811, the King had seemed to be recovering from his latest round of bad health. His problems had begun in 1765 with depression, but became serious in 1788 with hallucinations and mental derangement, which kicked off the first regency crisis. The King’s mania and delusions continued from the summer of 1788 into 1789, and in February of that year, the Regency Bill was first introduced. However, King George III recovered and the idea of a regency was shelved, but other attacks of illness would reoccur in 1795, 1801, 1804, and 1810. The King was also going blind.
In 1811, many in Parliament hoped a regency might not be needed. As of February 2, 1811, the Queen had sent a letter to the Prince stating that the King appeared to be recovering. The Tory party worried that if Prince George took power he would reward his Whig friends with a new government—hence all the restrictions. But the Prince agreed to the restrictions, and so the act was carried forward.
Following the pattern set in 1789, without the King’s consent, the Lord Chancellor affixed the Great Seal to letters patent naming Lords Commissioners. This was irregular because only Letters Patent signed by the ruling monarch were meant to appoint Lords Commissioners or grant Royal Assent. However, because the King was incapacitated, resolutions by both Houses of Parliament approved the action and directed the Lord Chancellor to prepare the Letters Patent and affix the Great Seal. (In 1789, the King, after he recovered, had declared this had been a valid and legal action.) There was no Council of Regency set up since the Prince was both of age and heir to the throne. The Prince was required to swear his allegiance to the King, and relinquish the care of the King to the Queen, and she was given a Queen’s council.
On February 18, the Duke of Northumberland sent congratulates to the Prince, writing, ‘the goodness of your heart, & the superiority of your understanding cannot fail, sir, to ensure happiness to the people, who live under your government’. Others saw this whole thing in a less promising light, given that the Prince Regent had promised to keep the Tory party in power. Lord Moria wrote ‘it grieves me to the soul’ [about the] ‘unexplained departure from all those principals which you have so long professed’. The Prince had abandoned the Whig party.
In June of 1811, the Prince Regent held a fabulous celebration at Carlton House, said to be for the King’s Birthday. Everyone, however, knew this was the Prince celebrating being out from under his father’s power. In July, 1811, the King’s condition worsened, and by February 1812 everyone had given up on the King ever recovering his mind and health. The regency restrictions were lifted from the Prince. The Regency was now fully launched and would continue until January 29, 1820 when King George III died and the Prince Regent became George IV.
(On a side note, the London Chronicle reported that on February 5, 1811 “…the Whig Club held their first meeting of the season at the Crown and Anchor, the Duke of Norfolk in the chair”. They must have hoped the Regency would bring the Whigs to power.)
To read more:
https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/and-so-it-begins/