George IV of The United Kingdom - Marriage and Mistresses

Marriage and Mistresses

The Prince of Wales's debts continued to climb, and his father refused to aid him unless he married his cousin Princess Caroline of Brunswick. In 1795, the Prince of Wales acquiesced, and they were married on 8 April 1795 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace. The marriage, however, was disastrous; each party was unsuited to the other. The two were formally separated after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte, in 1796, and remained separated thereafter. The Prince of Wales remained attached to Mrs. Fitzherbert for the rest of his life, despite several periods of estrangement.

George's mistresses included Mary Robinson, an actress who was bought off with a generous pension when she threatened to sell his letters to the newspapers; Grace Elliott, the divorced wife of a physician; and Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, who dominated his life for some years. In later life, his mistresses were the Marchioness of Hertford and the Marchioness Conyngham, who were both married to aristocrats.

George may have fathered several illegitimate children. James Ord (born 1786)—who moved to the United States and became a Jesuit priest—was reportedly his son by Mrs. Fitzherbert. The King, late in life, told a friend that he had a son who was a naval officer in the West Indies, whose identity has been tentatively established as Capt. Henry A. F. Hervey (1786–1824), reportedly George's child by the songwriter Lady Anne Lindsay (later Barnard), a daughter of the 5th Earl of Balcarres. Other reported offspring include Major George Seymour Crole, the son of theatre manager's daughter Eliza Crole or Fox; William Hampshire, the son of publican's daughter Sarah Brown; and Charles "Beau" Candy, the son of a Frenchwoman with that surname. Anthony Camp, Director of Research at the Society of Genealogists, has dismissed the claims that George IV was the father of Ord, Hervey, Hampshire and Candy as fictitious.

The problem of the Prince of Wales's debts, which amounted to the extraordinary sum of £630,000 (equal to £49,820,000 today) in 1795, was solved (at least temporarily) by Parliament. Being unwilling to make an outright grant to relieve these debts, it provided him an additional sum of £65,000 (equal to £5,140,000 today) per annum. In 1803, a further £60,000 (equal to £4,486,000 today) was added, and the Prince of Wales's debts of 1795 were finally cleared in 1806, although the debts he had incurred since 1795 remained.

In 1804 a dispute arose over the custody of Princess Charlotte, which led to her being placed in the care of the King, George III. It also led to a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into Princess Caroline's conduct after the Prince of Wales accused her of having an illegitimate son. The investigation cleared Caroline of the charge but still revealed her behaviour to be extraordinarily indiscreet.