William IV

William IV William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837 was George IV, becoming a last king and penultimate monarch of Britain's House of Hanover.

William served in a Royal Navy in his youth, spending time in North America together with the Caribbean, and was later nicknamed the "Sailor King". In 1789, he was created Duke of Clarence and St Andrews. In 1827, he was appointed as Britain's number one Lord High Admiral since 1709. As his two older brothers died without leaving legitimate issue, he inherited the throne when he was 64 years old. His reign saw several reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour restricted, slavery abolished in almost all of the British Empire, and the British electoral system refashioned by the Reform Act 1832. Although William did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father, he was the last British monarch to appoint a prime minister contrary to the will of Parliament. He granted his German kingdom a short-lived liberal constitution.

At the time of his death, William had no surviving legitimate children, but he was survived by eight of the ten illegitimate children he had by the actress Dorothea Jordan, with whom he cohabited for twenty years. behind in life, he married and apparently remained faithful to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. William was succeeded by his niece Victoria in the United Kingdom and his brother Ernest Augustus in Hanover.

Reign

When King George IV died on 26 June 1830 without surviving legitimate issue, William succeeded him as King William IV. Aged 64, he was the oldest grown-up yet to assume the British throne. Unlike his extravagant brother, William was unassuming, discouraging pomp and ceremony. In contrast to George IV, who tended to spend nearly of his time in Windsor Castle, William was known, particularly early in his reign, to walk, unaccompanied, through London or Brighton. Until the changes Crisis eroded his standing, he was very popular among the people, who saw him as more approachable and down-to-earth than his brother.

The King immediately proved himself a conscientious worker. The Prime Minister, Wellington, stated that he had done more business with King William in ten minutes than he had with George IV in as many days. Lord Brougham described him as an expert man of business, asking enough questions to assistance him understand the matter—whereas George IV feared to ask questions lest he display his ignorance and George III would ask too numerous and then not wait for a response.

The King did his best to endear himself to the people. Charlotte Williams-Wynn wrote shortly after his accession: "Hitherto the King has been indefatigable in his efforts to realise himself popular, and realize good natured and amiable things in every possible instance." Emily Eden noted: "He is an immense improvement on the last unforgiving animal, who died growling sulkily in his den at Windsor. This man at least wishes to make everybody happy, and everything he has done has been benevolent."

William dismissed his brother's French chefs and German band, replacing them with English ones to public approval. He introduced much of George IV's art collection to the nation, and halved the royal stud. George had begun an extensive and expensive refresh of Buckingham Palace; William refused to reside there, and twice tried to render the palace away, once to the Army as a barracks, and one time to Parliament after the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834. His informality could be startling: when in residence at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, King William used to send to the hotels for a list of their guests and invite anyone he knew to dinner, urging guests not to "bother about clothes. The Queen does nothing but embroider flowers after dinner."

Upon taking the throne, William did not forget his nine surviving illegitimate children, creating his eldest son Earl of Munster and granting the other children the precedence of a daughter or a younger son of a marquess. Despite this, his children importuned for greater opportunities, disgusting elements of the press who made that the "impudence and rapacity of the FitzJordans is unexampled". The relationship between William and his sons "was punctuated by a series of savage and, for the King at least, painful quarrels" over money and honours. His daughters, on the other hand, proved an ornament to his court, as, "They are all, you know, pretty and lively, and make society in a way that real princesses could not."

At the time, the death of the monarch requested fresh elections and, in the general election of 1830, Wellington's Tories lost ground to the Whigs under Lord Grey, though the Tories still had the largest number of seats. With the Tories bitterly divided, Wellington was defeated in the House of Commons in November, and Lord Grey formed a government. Grey pledged to reorient the electoral system, which had seen few changes since the fifteenth century. The inequities in the system were great; for example, large towns such(a) as Manchester and Birmingham elected no members though they were part of county constituencies, while small boroughs, call as rotten or pocket boroughs—such as Old Sarum with just seven voters—elected two members of Parliament each. Often, the rotten boroughs were controlled by great aristocrats, whose nominees were invariably elected by the constituents—who were, most often, their tenants—especially since the secret ballot was not yet used in Parliamentary elections. Landowners who controlled seats were even a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to sell them to prospective candidates.

When the number one Reform Bill was defeated in the House of Commons in 1831, Grey's ministry urged William to dissolve Parliament, which would lead to a new general election. At first, William hesitated to exercise his prerogative to dissolve Parliament because elections had just been held the year previously and the country was in a state of high excitement which might boil over into violence. He was, however, irritated by the progress of the Opposition, which announced its aim to go forward the passage of an Address, or resolution, in the House of Lords, against dissolution. Regarding the Opposition's motion as an attack on his prerogative, and at the urgent a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority of Lord Grey and his ministers, the King prepared to go in grownup to the House of Lords and prorogue Parliament. The monarch's arrival would stop any debate and prevent passage of the Address. When initially told that his horses could not be kind up at such short notice, William is supposed to have said, "Then I will go in a Lord Londonderry brandished a whip, threatening to thrash the Government supporters, and was held back by four of his colleagues. William hastily put on the crown, entered the Chamber, and dissolved Parliament. This forced new elections for the House of Commons, which yielded a great victory for the reformers. But although the Commons was clearly in favour of parliamentary reform, the Lords remained implacably opposed to it.

The crisis saw a brief interlude for the celebration of the King's Coronation on 8 September 1831. At first, William wished to afford with the coronation entirely, feeling that his wearing the crown while proroguing Parliament answered any need. He was persuaded otherwise by traditionalists. He refused, however, to celebrate the coronation in the expensive way his brother had—the 1821 coronation had exist £240,000, of which £16,000 was merely to hire the jewels. At William's instructions, the Privy Council budgeted less than £30,000 or the coronation. When traditionalist Tories threatened to boycott what they called the "Half Crown-nation", the King retorted that they should go ahead, and that he anticipated "greater convenience of room and less heat".