Although in reality the king’s condition continued pretty much unchanged, Willis introduced order, direction and, above all, a glint of optimism into the darkness that prevailed at Kew. ‘I have great hopes of His Majesty’s recovery,’ he maintained determinedly. Given the particular stresses to which the king’s situation exposed him, he was reluctant to predict precisely when this might occur, but that it would eventually take place, he had no doubt. Willis’s indefatigable conviction gave encouragement where there had been none before, and he was treated like a hero by the king’s friends. Fanny Burney thought him ‘a man in ten thousand: open, honest, dauntless, light-hearted, innocent and high-minded’. The queen was equally impressed. She quickly came to regard Willis, whose arrival she had so dreaded, as an unlikely ally in her ordeal. She was, she said, ‘very much dissatisfied with Sir George Baker and Dr Warren, and very well satisfied … with Dr Willis’, whom she wished ‘could be left to care for the king without the interference of the other physicians’.130 However, the queen’s increasing reliance on Dr Willis was to usher in a host of fresh complications.
The king had been unable to attend to any public business for over a month by this time, and whatever small improvements ‘hopers’ like Willis and Fanny Burney discerned, it was impossible to imagine him doing so in the immediate future. This situation could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. George’s role in the political process was far from nominal. His assent was required for all legislation, and the absence of the king meant that there was a vacuum – and potentially a very destabilising one – at the heart of politics. Although the government was chosen from and depended on the support of an active, engaged political class that was extremely protective of its role, a stable administration was all but impossible without the approval of the king. A substantial number of office holders sitting in the House of Commons were heavily dependent on the Crown for their income, and their support could be marshalled to come to its aid when necessary. Harnessing the power of these ‘placemen’ gave the king considerable weight in Parliament, when he chose to use it: as has been seen, George had deployed them to dispatch at least one administration he disliked. The role of the monarch in the business of government was a real and vital one; indeed, it was impossible to imagine the culture of contemporary politics without it.
There was a possible solution, of course – although it was one the king’s friends could hardly bear to contemplate. It was not until the end of November that Fanny Burney could bring herself even to mention the term ‘regency’, a word she admitted ‘I have not yet been able to articulate’.131 The Prince of Wales had had no such qualms, having compiled the first list of ministers he intended to place in office as early as 10 November.132 He was not alone in seeing a regency as inevitable. It was the obvious implication of the memorandum on the king’s health that Pitt had drawn up on 8 November, and his Cabinet colleague Lord Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, was said to have declared on the 12th that ‘there must be a regent, and that regent is the Prince of Wales’.133
However, as everyone knew, if the prince did come into power, he would not retain any of his father’s ministers; Pitt’s name certainly did not feature on any of the lists that occupied the prince in his speculative spare moments. It had been one of the many causes of friction between father and son that the prince had thrown in his lot with men whom the king disliked, both for their morals and their Whiggish politics. Like every other Hanoverian Prince of Wales before him, he had added opposition politics to the heady mix of provocation designed to outrage his father. If the prince became regent, a change of administration would inevitably follow.
Faced with the prospect of political obliteration, Pitt played for time. There was little else he could do, as events seemed to be moving irrevocably in the prince’s favour. Charles Fox, who had been travelling in Italy and was unaware of the king’s illness until a messenger turned up in Bologna begging him to return, arrived back in London after an exhausting nine-day journey across Europe. Alongside Richard Sheridan and the Duke of Devonshire, he met the prince on 26 November and began to plan for their transition into government. Meanwhile, Pitt had Parliament adjourned in order that precedents for the establishment of a regency might be investigated. He also arranged to have the physicians interviewed by the Privy Council, to try to establish more clearly the king’s current condition. From Pitt’s perspective, the meeting, which took place on 3 December, was hardly encouraging. The doctors agreed that the king was ‘at present totally incapable of attending to public business’. They thought it not impossible that he might, at some later stage, recover, but they could not say when this might happen. During the proceedings, Warren was reprimanded for ‘mentioning the word insane; and when he was advised not to, and another expression was dictated to him, he answered it was the same thing’.134 Supporters of the prince – and Warren was his physician before he was engaged to be the king’s – were keen to stress the seriousness of his condition, whilst Pitt’s followers and the king’s friends found themselves compelled into optimism. Willis, with his bullish assessment of the likelihood of the king’s recovery, soon found himself, not unwillingly, pressed into the political service of Pitt. The war between the politicians was fought by proxy amongst the king’s physicians, and with just as much venom and guile. The sickroom at Kew was soon as highly politicised as the chamber of the House of Commons.
A powerful combination of diffidence, depression and the deeply ingrained instinct of a lifetime impelled the queen to do all she could to avoid being sucked into this volatile brew of argument. Shortly after the king had been moved to Kew, the Lord Chancellor had asked her to take nominal responsibility for the king’s person. Fearing the consequences of such an ill-defined obligation, and desperate to obey the king’s much-repeated directive never to involve herself in domestic politics, she had refused to accept the task. But as the prospect of a regency grew ever more real, she was forced into more direct action by what seemed to her the manipulation of the king’s illness for political advantage. Yet, in attempting to defend the interests of her husband, she found herself opposed to those of her son. The result was a rift between Charlotte and her eldest child which would take years to heal, and was, perhaps, never entirely forgotten nor forgiven by either of them.
At the beginning of December, Pitt revealed his proposals for filling the political vacuum with a plan of staggering boldness aimed to stop the opposition in their tracks. Its provisions would also sour even further relations between the queen and her eldest son. Pitt argued that, as the doctors agreed that the king might at some stage recover, his authority should be considered not as terminated, but merely ‘interrupted’. In such delicate circumstances, the appointment of a regent could not be a simple matter of succession. The hereditary principle was, in this unprecedented case, subordinate to the will of the people: Parliament would decide on the most appropriate person to take up the office. Even more provocatively, Pitt added that Parliament would also determine the nature and extent of a regent’s powers, subjecting the issue to debate in both Houses. This was an audacious and brilliant move, transforming at a stroke the fortunes of Pitt’s party. It forced Fox, who had built his career on a defence of British liberty against the encroachments of the Crown, into arguing in favour of the prince’s entitlement to exercise his hereditary right without the interference of or curb by Parliament, a position that was as uncomfortable for him intellectually as it was politically. The widespread unpopularity of the Prince of Wales did nothing to help the beleaguered Fox. The possibility of his accession to power was greeted with no enthusiasm beyond the circle of his political intimates. His reputation as a spendthrift and a reprobate impressed the serious men of the City no more than they did his father. ‘The stocks are already fallen 2 per cent,’ wrote one observer, ‘and the alarms of the people of London are very little flattering to the prince.’135
When Pitt’s proposals were debated by the Commons on 10 December, they were passed by 286 votes
to 204. A few weeks later, Pitt sent the prince the terms on which the regency would, if circumstances did not change, be offered to him. He was to have no power to bestow titles on anyone except members of the royal family; he was not to be allowed to sell or make use of any of the king’s personal property; and he was to have no power to grant any other offices or pensions. By denying him the lifeblood of eighteenth-century politics – the exercise of patronage – Pitt sought to tie the prince’s hands as tightly as he could. ‘It was clear that they intended to put the strait waistcoat on the Prince of Wales,’ wrote one onlooker, wryly.136
The prince told the Duke of Devonshire that he must crush Pitt or Pitt would crush him, adding ominously that he thought ‘the queen had been playing a very underhand part’. Opposition politicians were convinced that Pitt’s political boldness was rooted in his certainty that if the prince refused the regency in the restricted form on offer, the queen would be persuaded to take it. Lady Elizabeth Foster, a passionate advocate of the prince’s cause, had heard as early as 5 December that Pitt meant to offer the queen at least a share in the regency. Some weeks later, Gilbert Elliot was even more convinced of Charlotte’s duplicity: ‘She is playing the devil, and has been all this time at the bottom of the cabals and intrigues against the prince.’ Significantly, he identified Willis – whom he described as ‘a quack’ – as a key player in such schemes. ‘One principal engine of the intriguers is the opinion that they contrive to maintain in public that the king’s recovery is to be expected with certainty, and very speedily. Dr Willis was brought about the king for that purpose, the other physicians not being sufficiently subservient.’ He too had no doubt that if the prince felt himself unable to accept the regency, the queen ‘was ready to accept it’.137 It became an article of faith amongst the prince’s friends that the position and power that should have been his by right had been deliberately and calculatedly denied him by the machinations of his mother.
It certainly suited Pitt for his opponents to believe that he had another royal card up his sleeve, as it were, ready to play if the prince proved recalcitrant. Even William Grenville, his astute colleague, thought it possible that Charlotte might be induced to take the job, though it seems unlikely that the queen ever seriously considered the possibility. Her deep-seated fear of incurring the king’s displeasure by any act of self-assertion was probably enough to have prevented her; and worn down by anxiety and depression, she was unlikely to have chosen this moment to reverse the emotional subservience instilled over a lifetime. Yet, for all her accustomed timidity, she was prepared to adopt a more bullish stance in defence of what she identified as the king’s interests. It is certainly true that during December she emerged a little from her seclusion to play a pivotal part in the war between the physicians that had begun with Willis’s arrival on the 5th.
Most of the battles took place over the bulletins on the state of the king’s health which the physicians issued jointly each day. As the only form of regular official information on his condition available to the public, they were extremely sensitive documents, made more so by the prevailing belief that madness was a shameful condition to be concealed and hidden from view wherever possible. The queen strove hard to ensure that the bulletins contained as little as possible that could embarrass or humiliate the king. She was deeply distressed at the inclusion of the words ‘much disturbed’ in one of the reports, and succeeded in having them altered. As the crisis over the regency continued, the official description of the king’s condition took on even greater significance. On 16 December, for example, the king had had six hours’ sleep during the night, far more than usual, and potentially an encouraging sign. Willis accordingly argued the bulletin should state that he had had a very good night. But his colleagues disagreed, arguing that the hours of sleep had not in fact been consecutive, but ‘composed of three different sleeps’. Willis refused to retreat and ‘would only sign to a very good night’. The other physicians remonstrated and complained, but Willis was adamant; in the face of his immovability, his colleagues backed down.
Dr Warren – who, significantly, was not present on that occasion – was made of sterner stuff. Throughout December and January, Warren opposed all efforts by Willis to turn the bulletins into what he considered unrealistically upbeat assessments of the king’s state. In doing so, he saw himself as defending the interests of the Prince of Wales, his patron. If the queen had come to rely entirely upon Willis, her son invested his faith just as explicitly in Warren’s judgement. These simmering grievances came to a head early in January, when the determined optimism of Willis and the queen clashed directly with Warren’s refusal to endorse it. On the morning of the 2nd, Warren and the other doctors compiled their bulletin, which was sent to the queen for inspection. She returned it immediately. It did not, she felt, adequately reflect the many lucid intervals that the king had enjoyed. Greville, who was present, ‘found that she had wished an alteration and that the physicians would insert “that the king continued mending”’. This Warren refused to do. In his opinion, episodes of occasional lucidity were not the same as steady, progressive recovery. ‘On being further pressed, Dr Warren said that he had often, in such cases, heard many sensible remarks made by a patient, but these did not prove that the person was well, but improper remarks always were decisive, and proved that the person was still deranged.’138
When the queen heard that Warren was still refusing to agree to the inclusion of the disputed words, she sent for him, clearly intending to have it out with him herself. Gilbert Elliot, who probably heard the story direct from Warren, reported that he found her ‘white with rage’. Lady Harcourt, who was also present during the interview, recalled that when Warren was asked to explain why he would not sign the contested bulletin, he repeated the argument he had used with Willis. ‘If a man was perfectly reasonable for 23 hours and deranged during the other hour of the 24, then he considered him in the same light as if he had no lucid intervals.’139 He added in support of his opinion ‘that the king had cried very much’. ‘If you call that being disturbed,’ said the queen, ‘then the whole house is disturbed.’140
Warren was undeterred, arguing that anyone who had heard the king’s conversation that day could have no doubt of his true state. When the queen demanded to know what he had said, Warren refused to repeat it, ‘on the grounds of the impossibility of relating such discourse to her’.141 He said she might speak to another of the physicians, who had been there when the crucial words were uttered. When the doctor arrived to be interrogated, Warren set the tone for what followed by observing: ‘I believe you will not think it proper to repeat to these ladies what the king said.’ ‘Certainly not,’ agreed the doctor.142 Charlotte must eventually have discovered exactly what her husband had said. Certainly his alleged comments were soon common currency amongst the social and political elite. Lady Elizabeth Foster heard that, referring to Willis, the king had ‘wondered the queen would allow that ugly, fumbling old fellow to go to bed with her’.143 The realisation that these hurtful words had, as one writer put it, ‘amused the town much’ can only have added to Charlotte’s distress. The knowledge that Warren had witnessed these humiliations – and the suspicion that he had discussed them with his Whig friends – did not dispose the queen in his favour. ‘I should be glad never to see him again,’ wrote Lady Harcourt, ‘and the queen has told me she never will.’144 For ever after, he remained fixed in Charlotte’s personal demonology as ‘that black spirit Dr Warren’.145
In the midst of such contradictory reports, it was hard to know what to believe about the king’s true state. Greville, who saw more of him than almost anyone else and was unencumbered by political prejudice or family relationship, did not think him much improved. In fact, though no supporter of the prince, like Warren he thought that Willis often allowed his loyalties to sway his judgement. A few days before the row with the queen, he had noted that ‘Dr Willis gave to Mr Pitt this night the most flattering accounts, assuring the minister that His M
ajesty was … so well that he was sure he was at that moment as capable of transacting any business of state as ever he had been in his life.’ Greville, who was far too much the gentleman to accuse anyone of lying, confined himself to the observation that ‘I was not a little surprised at Dr Willis’s hazarding thus, and un-pressed, such very strong assertions.’146 He had long suspected that Willis was as much driven by politics as Warren. On 19 December, he wrote that Willis was ‘unguarded and imprudent’ for a man in such a conspicuous and responsible situation. Not only did he lean ‘strongly to a political party’, he also did ‘not appear to confine his politics to the approbation of present measures or to the admiration of Mr Pitt, but he attacks Mr Fox and the Opposition with as much zeal as any partisan I know’. Greville was increasingly disillusioned, writing morosely in his diary that ‘less triumph on short successes and more check on the eagerness of politics are the two most desirable essentials wanting’.147 Neither was much in evidence at Kew during December and January.
*
The king had probably been at his worst around mid-December 1788, when any beneficial effects delivered by the quinine and opiates originally prescribed by Willis had worn off. The physicians continued to dose him with emetics, which made him vomit, and with castor oil in an attempt to move his costive bowels. As none of this had any effect on his behaviour, except perhaps to render him increasingly agitated, the strait waistcoat was brought into ever more frequent use. Even Greville, who had once been in favour of a firmer regime, was horrified by what he witnessed. Arriving at the king’s rooms at noon on 20 December, he discovered that ‘recourse to the strait waistcoat’ had been necessary during the night and that the king was still to be found ‘in the same melancholy situation … His legs were tied, and he was secured across the breast.’148 Willis recorded that, whilst pinioned to his bed, throughout the night the king had called despairingly on his five-year-old favourite daughter Amelia to help him. ‘Oh Emily, why won’t you save your father? Why must a king lie in this damned confined condition?’149 The king was kept ‘under coercion’ till two in the afternoon, noted Greville, but became ‘agitated and disturbed’ again later in the evening. ‘He was checked at this time by Dr Willis, who recommended him to be more calm or that he would certainly talk himself into a strait jacket.’150
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