On the king being taken ill in the end of 1810 the Prince of Wales was in the first instance appointed regent, with restricted powers, and for only one year. He entered upon his office by being sworn in before the privy council, 3rd of February 1811. The restrictions however were removed in the beginning of the following year. On thus becoming king in everything but in name, the prince disap pointed the expectations of a great part of the public by retaining Mr. Perceval and the other ministers whom he bad found in office on assuming the direction of the government. In fact no change in the policy of the government was produced by the regency : the prince threw off at once both his former associates and their principles. It is impossible, even if it were desirable, here to recount, except very cursorily, the succeeding course of events—respecting a large portion of which indeed, from their recentness, every reader must be supposed to possess a more complete knowledge than we can here attempt to supply. The course of public opeurrences down to 1820 has been gladly noticed in the preceding article. In the beginning of 1813, the unhappy differences between the prince and his wife again became the subject of parliamentary and public discussion, in consequence of the publication by the princess in the newspapers of a letter which she had addressed to the prince, remonstrating against some steps that had been taken in relation to the Princess Charlotte. Upon that occasion the privy council, on the matter being submitted to them by the prince, reported that under all the circumstances of the case it was highly fit and proper "that the intercourse between her royal highneea the Princess of Wales and her royal highness the Princess Charlotte should continue to be subject to regulation and restraint." Her former friends, the Tories, bad now completely abandoned the cause of the Princess of Wales ; the second name attached to this report was that of her recent confidential adviser, Lord Eldon. The publication of ' The Book' immediately followed. In 1614 the visit of the Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia to London, after the peace of Paris, led to renewed exposure and agitation, by the regent refusing to meet the princess at the drawing-room held by the queen for the reception of the foreign sovereigns. In resentment for her exclusion on this occasion, her royal highness left the country in the beginning of August, having first asked and obtained permission to make a tour on the Continent. It was understood that the intention now was to marry the Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange, eldest son of the King of tho Netherlands ; but on the 2nd of May 1816 she was married to Prince Leopold George Frederio of Saxe Coburg, the present king of Belgium. Her melancholy death in childbed followed on the 6th of November 1817, an event which placed the Duke of York next in succession to the crown. On the 5th of January, in this last-mentioned year, when the Prince Regent went to open parliament, he was shot at on his return through the park ; two balls perforated the glass of the carriage. This occurrence and the excited state of the country led to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and to various other measures curtailing the public liberties. At this time, of seven eons of the king no one had any issue ; in these circumstances, in order to provide for the cou tinuance of the line of succession, the dukes of Clarence, of Kent, and of Cambridge were all married in the course of the year 1818.
The Duke of Cumberland had been married In 1615, but his son, the present King of Hanover, was not born till 1819.
The Prinee Regent ascended the throne as George IV. on the death of his father, January 29, 1820. The first great public event of the now reign was the detection, on the 23rd of February, of the Cato-street plot to assassinate the ministers. Queen Caroline arrived in London on the 6th of June, and on the evening of the same day a message from the king was delivered to both houses of parliament, communicating papers respecting her alleged misconduct while abroad. On the 5th of July, a bill for divorcing and degrading her was intro duced into the House of Lord, by the premier, Lord Liverpool; the examination of witnesses in support and refutation of the charges on which this measure professed to be founded occupied some succeeding months. On the 6th of November, the second reading of the bill
was carried by a majority of 123 to 95; on the 10th the third reading was only carried by 108 to 99; on this division, which destroyed all chance of the measure passing the Commons, it was abandoned. The queen however did not long survive her escape. The coronation of the king took place on the 19th of July 1821, when her majesty, having previously claimed it as her legal right to be crowned at the same time as queen consort, was repulsed in an attempt to obtain admission at the doors both of Westminster Hall and the Abbey. A few days after she was taken ill, and died at Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith, on the 7th of August. The king was at this timo absent on a visit to Ireland; in the end of September he set out for Hanover, from which be did not return till the beginning of November ; and in August following he went to Scotland. The suicide of the Marquis of Londonderry, secretary for foreign affairs, occurred while the king was absent on this last visit, and produced some ehauge in the foreign policy of the administration. [CANNING, GEORGE.] The year 1822 was marked by severe agricultural distress and much discontent in England, and by more serious disturbances in Ireland.
Of the foreign transactions of the two or three following years, the most important were the recognition of the new states of South America, by sending consuls to them in October 1823; the contest with the Arlinntees in 1824 ; and the commencement in April of that year of the Burmese war, which terminated in February 1826, in the treaty of Yandaboo, giving the British a considerable accession of territory on the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal. Of domeatio events during the same period, the most memorable is the great com mercial crisis of December 1825. In December 1826, a body of troops was sent to Portugal to support the princess regent and the consti tution established by Dou Pedro against the hostile attempts of the Spanish government and of the absolutist faction organised by that power; the British force speedily put down the rebellion and restored tranquillity. Tho death of the Duke of York, January 22, 1827, transferred the character of heir presumptive to the Duke of Clarence ; and the office of commander-in-chief, in which the Duke of York had been replaced soon after the commencement of the regency, to the Duke of Wellington. The termination of the political life of Lord Liverpool by a stroke of apoplexy followed on the 17th of February ; the consequence of which was a complete change of ministry. In the beginning of April Mr. Canning was appointed first lord of the treasury, and soon after chancellor of the exchequer, on which the great body of the Whigs became the supporters of the new adminis tration, while it was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Mr. Peel, and others of the premier's former friends and colleagues. [CANNING, GEORGE.] The death of Mr. Canning however, on the 8th of Angust, made a new arrangement necessary. Viscount Goderieh (now Earl of Ripon) then became premier, the Duko of Welliogton being reappointed to the command of tho forces, with a seat in the cabinet. Some time after this arrangement had been completed, the news arrived of the destruction of the Turkish fleet in the Bay of Navarino in Greece, by the attack of the combined squadrons of England, France, and Russia ; an occurrence which in his majesty's speech, delivered at the opening of parliament, 29th of January 1628, was characterised as "a collision wholly unexpected," and an "un toward event." Meanwhile differences, of which various explanations were afterwards given, but which may be suspected to have had some relation to the affairs of Greece and Turkey, as well as to other matters both of foreign and domestic policy, bad led to the resigna tion of Lord Goderieb, and the appointment, on the 25th of January, of the Duke of Wellington as first lord of the treasury. Tho now ministry however was still composed in part of the friends of the late Mr. Canning, as well as of the members of the Tory party. This state of things lasted till the end of May, when a sudden misunder standing or difference of opinion produced the resignation of Mr.