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George IV   Listen
George IV

noun
1.
King of Great Britain and Ireland and Hanover from 1820 to 1830; his attempt to divorce his estranged wife undermined the prestige of the Crown (1762-1830).  Synonym: George.






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"George IV" Quotes from Famous Books



... note in their day are now nothing but a memory. The first of these, the Dover House, was formed by George IV when Prince of Wales in opposition to Brooks's, where two of his friends had been black-balled. He placed it in the care of one Weltzie, who had been his house steward, and for a time it threatened to become a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... king could only act the part of a gentleman for ten minutes at a time"; and we find that the commonest satellites of the Court despised the wicked fribble who wore the crown of England. Faithless to women, faithless to men, a coward, a liar, a mean and grovelling cheat, George IV. nevertheless clung to a belief in his own virtues; and, if we study the account of his farcical progress through Scotland, we find that he imagined himself to be a useful and genuinely kingly personage. No man, except, perhaps, Philippe Egalite, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... acre,'' or a churchyard, "broad acres,'' &c. As a measure of land, it was first defined as the amount a yoke of oxen could plough in a day; statutory values were enacted in England by acts of Edward I., Edward III., Henry VIII. and George IV., and the Weights and Measures Act 1878 now defines it as containing 4840 sq. yds. In addition to this "statute'' or "imperial acre,'' other "acres'' are still, though rarely, used in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and certain English counties. The Scottish acre contains 6150.4 sq. yds.; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "Nobody will know you have left the house—you can be home in an hour. You will not be missed. Come, time is getting short, and I have my risks as well as others. Go at once to Old Steine. Stand on the path close under the shadow of the statue of George IV. and wait there. Somebody will say 'Come,' and you ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... events? Are there not the Conqueror? or, if you will, King Alfred? and Queen Elizabeth, and Shakspeare—think of Shakspeare, young lady—and Sir Walter Scott, and the Gun-Powder Plot; and Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, my dear Miss Eve; and Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge, and George IV., the descendant of a line of real kings,—what, in the name of Heaven, can Italy possess, to equal the interest one feels ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... shall express the nicest shades of a domestic difference. By a Port, one may understand them to indicate something unsympathetically impressive; whereas a Presence would seem to be a thing that directs the most affable appeal to our poor human weaknesses. His Majesty King George IV., for instance, possessed a Port: Beau Brummel wielded a Presence. Many, it is true, take a Presence to mean no more than a shirt-frill, and interpret a Port as the art of walking erect. But this is to look upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... world. To them he gave that side of him which refused to find its full expression in summarising law, playing golf, or reading the reviews; that side of a man which aches, he knows not wherefore, to construct something ere he die. From Rameses to George IV. the coins lay within those drawers—links of the long unbroken chain ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... reigns of George IV. and William IV., though not kept with the grandeur of earlier reigns, were observed with much rejoicing and festivity, and the Royal Bounties to the poor of the metropolis and the country districts surrounding Windsor and the other Royal Palaces were dispensed ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... twelve principal livery companies were for the first time nominated by the Court of Aldermen to join with the lord mayor in assisting the chief butler,(1651) and they continued to be so nominated on like occasions up to the coronation of George IV, when in consequence of a change of masters taking place between the time of their nomination and the day of the coronation, the new masters presented a petition to the Court of Claims praying to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... I was to be endowed: to what extent and upon what conditions I was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide and solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my way to Mr. Gregg's office, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... story, so accurate were the descriptions, although Miss Porter had not then been in Poland. The "Scottish Chiefs" was equally successful. With regard to this romance, it is known that Sir Walter Scott admitted to George IV., one day, in the library at Carlton Palace, that the "Scottish Chiefs" was the parent in his mind of the Waverley Novels. In a letter written to her friend Mr. Litchfield, about three months ago, Miss Porter, speaking ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... could not have devised a better representative system than that which Lord John Russell, in the previous session, had attempted to alter by proposing to enfranchise Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. But the election which followed the death of George IV on June 26th had not borne out the Duke's assertion; it had gone heavily against him. Lord Grey, forming his Ministry out of the old Whigs and the followers of Canning and Grenville, at once made Reform ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... present state, what would they do if they had power commensurate to their malice. God forbid I ever should have a despotic master; but if I must, my choice is made. I will have Louis XVI. rather than Monsieur Bailly, or Brissot, or Chabot; rather George III., or George IV., than Dr. Priestley or Dr. Kippis, persons who would not load a tyrannous power by the poisoned taunts of a vulgar, low-bred insolence. I hope we have still spirit enough to keep us from the one or the other. The contumelies of tyranny are ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... some had realised even 7s. 6d. per lb.; in one instance 10s., it is said, by a friendly competition: a sum three times greater than the English price of the finest continental wool. A specimen had been manufactured for George IV., and which so pleased him that he directed Sir J. Bloomfield to enquire if more could be obtained in England. There seemed now no hesitation in giving credit to Macarthur's prediction, that the boundless pastures of New South Wales would relieve ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... gardens when they were illuminated for a fete to George IV.,' said Rigby, as crossing the chamber he ushered his charge into the state apartments. The splendour and variety of the surrounding objects soon distracted the attention of the boy, for the first time in the palace of his ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... 26, 1830, died George IV., and with him died the pensions of the Royal Associates. Apparently they did not find this out until the following year. In the Englishman's Magazine for June, 1831, attention was directed to the fact that "intimation had been given to Mr. Coleridge and his brother Associates that they must ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... learned the demise of our revered and lamented sovereign George III., and the proclamation of George IV. We concealed this intelligence from the Indians, lest the death of their Great Father might lead them to suppose that we should be unable to fulfil our promises ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... effort anywhere to stop the enormous loss of human life by shipwreck was made by that most selfish of rulers, George IV., and the first lifeboat was built by a London coachmaker, Lukin, who, it is said, had never seen the sea. After that other models of lifeboats were produced in England, none of which proved satisfactory until in 1850 the duke of Northumberland ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... fit to be the repository of such knick-knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew where to find; but, rummaging here and there, he brought forth things new and old: rose-nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, double-sovereigns of George IV., two-guinea pieces of George II.; a marriage-medal of the first Napoleon, only forty-five of which were ever struck off, and of which even the British Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in gold; a brass ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... at the same hour, and it took the united strength of Dawson and Mr. Beresford, together with my diplomacy, to rescue the poor child from their clutches. She came out alive, but her safety was purchased at the cost of a George IV. cream-jug, an Elizabethan sugar-bowl, and a Boadicea tea-caddy, which were, I doubt not, manufactured in Wardour Street towards the close of ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... families. Even motoring through, too quickly as motorists must, one cannot help being struck by the substantial dignity of the place, by the well-kept prosperity of the houses, large and small, which fringe the fine old highway. Ever since the days when the three Misses Barker kept loyal to George IV, claiming the King as their liege lord fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, the town has preserved a Cranford-like charm. And why not, when the very house is still handsomely preserved, where the nameless ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event—to those who took part in it—the first visit of a King to Scotland since the Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted. His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw

... all this, here have been the coronation feasts of all England's monarchs, from William Rufus, who built it in 1099, down to George IV., 1820. Sad times and merry ones have been here. We stepped from the hall into the courts of law, which have entrances from this apartment, and we saw the lord chancellor on the bench in one, and the judges sitting in another. The courts were small, and not very ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... introduced him to strange society for an American "rebel" to frequent. During his visit he was "domesticated in the family of the Earl of Shelburne; placed under the particular protection of his chaplain, the celebrated Dr. Priestley; introduced" to George IV., then Prince of Wales, with whom was Charles Fox, and was "present at all the coteries of the opposition." Almost every evening he was invited to dinner-parties, at which the company was chiefly composed of members of Parliament, and they plied him with ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... him the cup, which he had for his fee, and likewise the harness and trappings, and all the harness which he did himself wear, and then he returned to the place from whence he came, and was gone.” On the last occasion, when this ceremony was observed, viz., at the coronation of George IV., the rightful champion being in Holy Orders, his son Henry, afterwards Sir H. Dymoke, Bart., was allowed to act for his father, who was the eighteenth of the hereditary champions of his family. Sir Walter Scott was present, and, writing to a friend, says, “Young Dymoke ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... James I. was repealed in George II.'s. reign, but even then persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or discover stolen goods, by skill in the occult sciences, were to be punished by a year's imprisonment; and by an Act, 5 George IV., c.83, any person or persons using any subtle art, means, or device, by palmistry, or otherwise, to deceive his Majesty's subjects, were to be deemed rogues and vagabonds, and to be punished with imprisonment ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... happy in a virtuous queen; but what if another profligate like George IV. should, by the accident of birth, become the heir of her sovereignty? France is as strong as one man's life can make her; but what if that man should run against some fanatic's idea which had taken shape in a bullet-mould, or receive a sudden call from that pale visitor who heeds no challenge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... all the little social proprieties. Is he a gentleman because he is honest and modest and humane? In describing Lovelace, should we not say that he was a gentleman? Should we naturally say so of Burns? But, again, is it not a joke to describe George IV. as a gentleman, while it would be impossible to deny the name ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... may be added, on the information of our valued correspondent "C.," "that it was about 1824 that Mr. Wyatt, being appointed by George IV. to conduct the improvements at Windsor Castle, had the absurd ambition of distinguishing himself from the other architects of his name by changing it to Wyattville. This produced the following epigram in, I think, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... quality of college head, he only, of all deans that ever were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man than his own diocesan. But it happened that the present dean had even higher titles to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the Prince of Wales (George IV.); he had repeatedly refused a bishopric; and that, perhaps, is entitled to place a man one degree above him who has accepted one. He was also supposed to have made a bishop, and afterwards, at least, it is certain that lie made his own brother a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... areca-palm, is the proper name of the island, but out of compliment to George IV, it was called Prince of Wales Island. Georgetown is the name of the capital, but by an odd freak we call the town Penang, and spell it with an e instead ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... straight home this year. There were no Peacock gaieties to tempt him in London, for old Sir Henry had died suddenly soon after the ball in December; nor was there much of a season that year, owing to the illness and death of George IV. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had once held him in folly's chains. Did he regret the step? Has ravening aspiration any compunction; any contrite visitings of nature? What did the player expect; that he would violate precedence; overthrow the fashionable maxims of good George IV; become a slave to a tragi-comic performer and cast his high destiny to the winds? Had ever a gentleman entertained such a project? Vows? Witness the agreeable perjuries of lovers; the pleasing pastime of fond hearts! ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... to be expected that much of real historical interest can be extracted from a Diary of this sort. It may, however, be noted that when the Bellerophon reached the English coast "it was only by coercion that the Ministers prevented George IV. from receiving Bonaparte. The King wanted to hold him as a captive." Moreover, Brougham, who was in a position to know, said, "There can be little doubt that if Bonaparte had got to London, the Whig Opposition were ready to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... entertainments and feastings by such dignitaries as William Pitt, the Lord Chancellor, and the Duke of Lids (Leeds). The gentlemen drank freely the whole night, and the songs, the crazy uproar, and smashing of glasses were very great. He went down to stay with the Prince of Wales (George IV.) who played on the violoncello, and charmed the composer by his kindness. "He is the handsomest man on God's earth. He has an extraordinary love of music, and a great deal of feeling, but very ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... schools, offering him a hundred dollars for his share in the work. Hawthorne accepted the offer and took a hand—I know not how large a one—in the job. His biographer has been able to identify a single phrase as our author's. He is speaking of George IV: "Even when he was quite a young man this King cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a great deal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a King, for he might otherwise have made an excellent tailor." The Universal ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... little by itself in Cambridge Gate. He used to declare that this situation combined all the advantages of London and the country, also that the Park that was good enough for the Regent was good enough for him. He had a decided cult for George IV; and there was even more than a hint of Beau Brummel in his dress. The only ugly thing in the house was a large coloured print of ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... well arranged. Pohlman, our Deputy Black Rod, who is a Herald, was the acting person, and did his duty admirably. There was no interruption, no confusion, but everything managed as if we had been drilled and did the same thing every day. And so King George IV. is gone to his grave with all the pomp of royalty, and splendid the pageant was; but it was considered a mere pageant even by his household, who had lived so intimately with him for years. There was no regret. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... eyes, which makes him keep them half shut or squinting. He walked off in the jaunty way all chiefs do in this country, to show the weight of rings and beads on the legs, and many imitate this walk who have none, exactly as our fathers imitated the big cravat of George IV., who thereby hid defects in his neck: thousands carried their cravats over the chin who had no defects to hide. Moenempanda carried his back stiffly, and no wonder, he had about ten yards of a train carried behind it. About 600 people were present. They kept rank, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... screw. The noblest of all genius is sober and reasonable: it is among geniuses of the second order that you find something so warped, so eccentric, so abnormal, as to come up to our idea of a screw. Sir Walter Scott was sound: save perhaps in the matter of his veneration for George IV., and of his desire to take rank as one of the country ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... in Piccadilly, was the resort of the Macao players. It was kept by an old maitre d'hotel of George IV., a character in his way, who took a just pride in the cookery and wines of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... distress, vast numbers of persons were thrown out of work, who could not at once turn to any other employment. In 1830 a deputation from the gilt button trade waited upon George IV. and the principal nobility, to solicit their patronage. The application succeeded, coloured coats with metal buttons came into fashion, and dandies of the first water appeared in bright snuff-coloured, pale green, and blue coats, such as are now only worn by Paul Bedford or Keeley, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... favour of the Stuarts—a Scottish dynasty—reinforced by encounters with men in the Highlands who had been out in the '45. It did not interfere with a practical loyalty to the reigning house and with what seems like a somewhat exaggerated deference to George IV. Personally the most modest of men, he was proud to trace his descent from "auld Wat of Harden" [13] and to claim kinship with the bold Buccleuch. He used to make annual pilgrimages to Harden Tower, "the incunabula ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... likeness to Mr. Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification on account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that anybody should be really like that most beautiful and perfect of men is impossible) to the great and revered George IV.: many third parties, who wore low necks to their dresses because they fancied that Lord Byron and themselves were similar in appearance: and has not the grave closed but lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination than Mr. Joseph ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the northern outskirts of Ashbury, before a building that appeared to Leonetta as unlike her mental image of a sanatorium as anything could possibly be. It was a large building with a white stucco front, badly cracked all over,—evidently a sort of old manor house of about the period of George IV,—and the sight of the smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of decay which characterised both ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... applied to the Court to award the bounties specified in the 6th of George IV. c. 49. for the capture and destruction of piratical ships and vessels. He submitted that the affidavits produced clearly showed the character of the persons on board the prahus, and that not less than 1,330 persons were alive on board the several ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... Queens of England until the time of George IV. were crowned in Westminster Hall, and in this same building Charles I. was condemned to death, and Oliver Cromwell was declared Protector of England, and here ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... a contemporary record of events already separated from us by a much longer interval, for the transactions related in these volumes commence in 1818 and end in 1837. I therefore commit to the press that portion of these Memoirs which embraces the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV., ending with the Accession ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... When he is in England he does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the whole system; when he is in America he grows impatient of freedom and a republic. If he had stayed there a little longer he would have become a loyal and a loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned the French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by millions: by the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour by some means or other (partly no doubt by himself), he had ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... said she, "than by the men." Very true. "You are loved by a widow named Mary." My landlady was a widow, and her name was Mary. "Which do you like best, Mary or Bessie?" In addition to Mary, there was another pleasant friend, supposed to be a natural daughter of George IV., named Bessie. But how the plague did the little gypsy know this? I found out, I believe, long after the whole affair was forgotten. There was present, without my knowledge, a man who was always full of such tricks, who knew me well, and who threw the gypsy in my way and put her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... for my delay in notussing the work. I see sefral of the papers and magazeens have been befoarhand with me, and have given their apinions concerning it: specially the Quotly Revew, which has most mussilessly cut to peases the author of this Dairy of the Times of George IV.* ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... piled with newspapers from every corner of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the deaths and marriages of the antipodes at their fingers' ends. Their albums and autographs, from Louis XVIII. and George IV., down to magazine poets and quack-doctors, are a museum. I shall never see the spirit of blue-stockingism again in such perfect incarnation. Peveril won't get over their final kissing match for a week. Yet ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... originated, which lingered in the Statute Book till the reign of George IV., which even thoroughly religious men could be so blinded by their prejudices as to defend, and which even such friends of toleration as Lord Mansfield could declare to be a 'bulwark of the Constitution,'[389] put occasional conformity into a very ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... my monarchs had the most excellent characters. EDWARD I. was "just," GEORGE IV. "courteous," OLIVER CROMWELL "noble"—a sad blow for the White Rose Club. Our younger monarchs were particularly attractive persons, and it is a pity that they did not live long enough to display their qualities. EDWARD VI. was "amiable," while EDWARD V., like all with expectations from their uncle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It meant the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... Brunswick is the grandson of him who figured in the wars of the old revolution, and the son of him who was killed at Quatre Bras. His grandmother was a sister of George III, and his aunt was the wife of George IV; the latter being his cousin, his uncle, and ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... withdraw to her mother, and resumed the talk which our entrance had interrupted. It was chiefly about people of whom we youngsters knew nothing—though our ignorance only argued ourselves unknown, for he named persons all famous in their day. He had seen George IV., Napoleon, Talleyrand, Wellington; he had been intimate with Coleridge, De Quincey, Wordsworth, Lamb, Monk Lewis; he was a sort of elder brother or deputy uncle to Tennyson, Browning, Dickens; he had quaffed ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... years old, came with his father to England; his mother returned to Austria. He went down to Windsor to see George IV., who was delighted with him, and Liszt, speaking of him to me, said: "I was very young at the time, but I remember the king very well—a fine, pompous-looking gentleman." George IV. went to Drury Lane on purpose to hear the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... that we had alighted,—named thus for the prince who afterwards became George IV.—and I hope he was, and is, properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that interdict of the Court of Sessions in 1774, which prevented the Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... was extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who, however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the increase of learning this "benefit to clergy" was restricted by several Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the reign of George IV. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... in the evening of the 31st of July, 1821, after having saluted His Majesty, George IV., who at that moment went on board the Royal George yacht, to proceed to Dublin,—we sailed in the Doris, a 42 gun frigate, for South America. After touching at Plymouth, and revisiting all the wonders of the break-water and new watering place, we sailed ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... (Vol. ii., p. 22.) were made universal by act of parliament in the fourth year of George IV. Before that they may have existed in some places. In Gloucestershire ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various

... was a friend of Dr. Burney's, and highly esteemed by Fanny both for his character and talents. He had been tutor to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.). We shall meet with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... to forget the court of that iniquitous man"—Anne could see a large-veined hand wave in the direction of a long portrait of George IV.—"since we are mercifully and at last permitted so to do. Besides," changing the subject hastily, "I believe in predestination. You forget that although married these thousand years to an Englishman I am a ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... of Washington as the greatest man on earth. The war, he said, was the King's war, ministers were his tools, the press was bought. He denounced later the King's reception of the traitor Arnold. When the King's degenerate son, who became George IV, after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual visit to Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... of the barons of King John's time, the barons of Runnymede and the Charter, most exquisitely and minutely copied from monuments, stained glass, brass effigies, etc.; it was a fine work, beautifully executed for the late king, George IV. I wish it had been executed for me. I did get A—— to walk in the square with me once, but she likes it even less than I do; my intellectual conversation is no equivalent for the shop-windows of Regent Street and the counters of the bazaar, and she ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... the nom de plume of Thomas Moore in The Two-Penny Post-Bag, a series of witty and very popular satires on the prince regent (afterwards George IV.), his ministers, and his boon companions. Also in The Fudge Family in Paris, and in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... George III. presented some antiquities, which necessitated the opening of a new department; to these were added the Hamilton and Townley antiquities by purchase, and in 1816 the Elgin Marbles were taken in temporarily. On the death of George III., George IV. presented his splendid library, known as the King's Library, to the Museum, not from any motive of generosity, but because he did not in the least appreciate it. Greville, in his Journal (1823), says: "The King had ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... waiting, sinister, was the Duke of Cumberland. Brougham, looking forward into the future in his scurrilous fashion, hinted at dreadful possibilities. "I never prayed so heartily for a Prince before," he wrote, on hearing that George IV had been attacked by illness. "If he had gone, all the troubles of these villains (the Tory Ministers) went with him, and they had Fred. I (the Duke of York) their own man for his life. He (Fred. I) won't live long either; that Prince of Blackguards, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... saw a lady buy one), and her children wondering at the sticking-plaister portraits with gold hair, and gold stocks, and prodigious high-heeled boots, miracles of art, and cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the fashion to run down George IV., but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank him for inventing Brighton! One of the best of physicians our city has ever known, is kind, cheerful, merry Doctor Brighton. Hail, thou purveyor of shrimps and honest prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... their shawls; let them eschew all false collars, let them delight in good lace, and the matter is settled. But for a man with a bad tie! we could take him by the throat and throttle him! Here it is our duty freely to declare our candid opinion, that Beau Brummell and George IV. were not benefactors to the human race by introducing stiff cravattes and endless swathes of linen round the region of jugular veins and carotid arteries; if a man wishes to be comfortable any where, it is surely in his neck; let old gentlemen with scrofulous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he himself was a past-master—drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... in 1761, by George III, and settled on Queen Charlotte. The present Buckingham Palace occupies the site. P. CUNNINGHAM. Here, according to Hawkins (Life, p. 470), Johnson met the Prince of Wales (George IV.) when a child, 'and enquired as to his knowledge of the Scriptures; the prince in his answers gave him great satisfaction.' Horace Walpole, writing of the Prince at the age of nineteen, says (Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 503):—'Nothing was coarser than his conversation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... stockbroker, supposed to be like the lamented George IV, rising with a laugh, and leisurely filling his pipe): Begad! what am I the worse for my paraphernalia? The General there and all of you, i' faith, are very glad to make use of my little ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... that time acting as Prince Regent in the place of his father, who was insane, was the chief sponsor for the child, and he gave her the name of Alexandrina in honor of Alexander, Emperor of Russia. The Duke of Kent wished her to bear her mother's name also, and George IV added the name Victoria. "Little Drina," the child was usually called when she was small, but when she grew older she decided that her mother's name should stand second to no other, and desired that she be called simply Victoria. There were uncles and cousins and her own father between the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Walter Smythe of Bambridge, Hampshire, and married, first, Edward Weld, secondly, Thomas Fitzherbert of Synnerton, Staffordshire (who died in 1781), and was said to have been married to the Prince of Wales (George IV.) in 1785. And there also was a more notorious beauty, Miss Grace Dalrymple, afterwards Mrs. Elliott,—though divorced later, and becoming the mistress of various aristocrats, notably the Duke ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... GEORGE IV. There are few departments of human distinction in which Great Britain cannot boast a 'celebrity'—genteel or ungenteel. In the matter of gambling we have been unapproachable—not only in the 'thorough' determination with which we have exhausted the pursuit—but in the vast, the fabulous ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... to Michael Kelly, who was a friend of Attwood and a pupil of Mozart at the time. [Thomas Attwood was an English musician, born in 1765. He was chorister of the Chapel Royal at the age of nine, and at sixteen attracted the attention of the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV., who sent him to Italy to study. He studied two years in Naples and one year in Vienna with Mozart. Returned to London he first composed for the theatre and afterward largely for the church. He and Mendelssohn were devoted ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... walls are portraits of later sovereigns from William III to George IV, that of George III being by Lawrence. The Mayoress' Parlour opening from the dais has been drastically restored. It contains portraits of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, and four benefactors to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... really is; and so on. This plot got very considerably mixed and there was no opportunity to properly re-arrange it. After reading the MSS. one friend wrote advising an additional chapter making Ned, immediately upon his being sentenced for "conspiracy" under George IV., 6, hear that Nellie has died of a broken heart. My wife, on the contrary, wants Ned and Nellie to come to an understanding and live happily ever after in the good old-fashioned style. This being left in abeyance, readers can ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... GEORGE IV., on hearing some one declare that Moore had murdered Sheridan, in his late life of that statesman, observed, "I won't say that Mr. Moore has murdered Sheridan, but he ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... arts of the old race, had two wives, never went to church, and considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth, and there was an end of him"—and his death and burial ceremony, and some of Borrow's own opinions, for example, in favour of Pontius Pilate and George IV.—these are simple and vigorous in the old style. They show that with a sufficient impulse he could have written another book at least equal to "Wild Wales." But these uneven fragments were not worthy of the living man. They were the sort ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... commodious, and more to his taste, for a much less sum than must have been expended upon it. The Marquis of Hastings, when Governor-General of India, broke up one of the most beautiful marble baths of this palace to send home to George IV of England, then Prince Regent, and the rest of the marble of the suite of apartments from which it had been taken, with all its exquisite fretwork and mosaic, was afterwards sold by auction, on account of our Government, by order of the then Governor-General, Lord W. Bentinck. Had ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... profusion and recklessness of her lies, Elizabeth had no peer in England. 2. Henry IV. said that James I. was the wisest fool in Christendom. 3. Cowper's letters are charming because they are simple and natural. 4. George IV., though he was pronounced the first gentleman in Europe, was, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... esplanade, is early Perp. Its two features of interest are its leaning W. tower, and an altar-piece designed by Inigo Jones for Whitehall Chapel, but eventually erected in Westminster Abbey. It appears to have been turned out of the abbey as lumber on the occasion of George IV.'s coronation, and to have been placed in Burnham Church by the then vicar, who was also Canon ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... flight after Culloden, and, although not built on any great elevation, it looks well in its wooded environs and well-kept grounds. A story was told of the last Lord Glengarry who, in 1820, travelled 600 miles to be present at the Coronation of King George IV. He was dressed on that magnificent and solemn occasion in the full costume of a Highland chief, including, as a matter of course, a brace of pistols. A lady who was at the reception happened to see one of the pistols in his clothing, and, being greatly alarmed, set up a loud shriek, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... The late King. George IV., who built, when Prince of Wales, the Brighton Pavilion. As I cannot find this incident in any memoirs of the Regency, I assume Lamb to have invented it, after his wont, when in need of a good parallel. "Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name" stands ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... the Maori from New Zealand forests. He stayed for a while at Cambridge, assisting a professor to compile a dictionary of the Maori language, and going to church regularly all the time. Then he had an audience from George IV., who gave him many presents, and among others a complete suit of ancient armour. For a whole season, Hongi was a sort of lion among London society. People crowded to see a chief who had eaten dozens of men, and so many presents were given him that when ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... very best days. In addition to the presence of George IV., then Prince of Wales, who was received by Lord Sherborne for the race week at his seat in the neighbourhood, and who every day appeared on the course as a private gentleman, there was a galaxy of gentlemen jockeys, who alone rode at this meeting, which has never since been ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... imperial parliament, 6th George IV, Chapters 73 and 114, went still farther in the way of removing restrictions from colonial trade. These Acts provided that the duties imposed under them should be paid by the collector of customs into the hands of the treasurer or receiver-general of the colony, to be applied to such uses as were ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... Bower-bird, Sericulus melinus, Lath., named out of compliment to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... pretty well agreed, and always has been, as to the qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when the vilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied the English throne,—and that is saying a great deal,—George IV, was universally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might be somewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for the wider fact that no person of English stock has been on the throne since Saxon Harold, the chosen and imposed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... III's father—the prince who did so much for Surrey cricket, and died, perhaps, from the blow of a cricket ball—lived at Kew House, and so did George III after him. George III pulled down Kew House in 1803, and built another; to be not less royal, George IV pulled that down. A smaller building, vaguely named Kew Palace still, stands in the Gardens; Queen Charlotte died there; you may see the room, and look, if you wish, on the tables and sofas she knew. But the pictures in Kew Palace were not all Queen Charlotte's; they ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... fortune found him in London, where he had accepted an engagement with the manager of King's Theater, and here he produced a number of his former works with moderate success. Rossini himself appeared upon the stage and sang the solos in a cantata which he had composed in honor of the King, George IV. He turned many honest pennies during his London engagement by acting as accompanist at private soirees for a fee of L50. At the end of five months he found himself in possession of L7,000, with which he made a graceful retreat to Paris, where he accepted the musical direction of the Theatre ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... residence and rank. I found him bending over his simple dinner of milk and coarse bread. He was dressed in old, and somewhat ragged, garments. He seemed so extremely old, that I did not trouble him with more than a very short conversation, in French. He showed me a portrait of George IV., given to him, he said, from the hands of that monarch, and a coloured engraving of the installation of one of the royal princes as chief of the Hurons. The poor old man, broken down with extreme age, had still the remains of a commanding presence, which even his miserable dress, unshaven beard, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... white-moustached, dignified old gentleman, in scarlet and velvet cap, riding forward on a magnificent gray horse, who realised completely the poetical idea of a nobleman. This was the Marquess of H——, known well forty years ago in fashionable circles, when George IV. was Prince, now popular and much esteemed as a country gentleman and improving landlord. There was also Mr. H——, an M.P., celebrated, before he settled into place and "ceased his hum," as a hunter of bishops—a handsome, dark man, in leathers and patent Napoleons; ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... very different to that of George IV., who, when the death of Napoleon was announced to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... rejoicings of the kind in the north since the good old times when respectable Tory gentlemen used to show themselves drunk in public on the King's birthday, in order to demonstrate their loyalty: the coronation days of both George IV. and William IV. had passed off as quietly as Sabbaths; and the Session, holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms, refused to alter ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... how he came to erect this gorgeous and eccentric home, Barnum once said that in visiting Brighton, England, he had been greatly pleased with the pavilion built there by George IV. It was at that time the only specimen of Oriental architecture in England, and the style had not been introduced into America. "I concluded to adopt it, and engaged a London architect to furnish me a set of drawings after the general plan of the pavilion, differing sufficiently ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... ambition he had left he declared was to believe himself forgotten; that was 'the thread that had run through his life;' 'so true,' he adds, 'except the folly of being an author, has been what I said last year to the Prince' (afterwards George IV.), 'when he asked me "If I was a Freemason," I replied, "No sir; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... visited Brambridge, for an old gardener named Newton, and Miss Frances Mary Bargus, who came to live at Otterbourne in 1820, remembered her, and the latter noted her fine arched brows. George IV.'s love for her was a very poor thing, but she was the only woman he ever had any real affection for, and he desired that her miniature should be buried ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... native of Venus is merry 'to a fault,' but of temper engaging, sweet and cheerful, unless she be ill aspected, when her native is apt to be too fond of pleasure and amusement. That her influence is good is shown (in the opinion of Raphael, writing in 1828) by the character of George IV., 'our present beloved monarch and most gracious majesty, who was born just as this benevolent star' was in the ascendant; 'for it is well known to all Europe what a refined and polished genius, and what exquisite taste, the King ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... During the various negotiations for a chef-lieu the question of reviving the English langue was started, and the French Commission entered into communication with the Rev. Sir Robert Peat, Chaplain to King George IV., and other distinguished Englishmen. The outcome was the reconstitution of the English langue on January 24, 1831, with Sir Robert Peat as ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen

... Cunningham, who was for several years resident in New South Wales, and who made frequent journeys into the interior of the continent as botanist to his late Majesty King George IV. and who also accompanied Captain P. P. King, during his survey of its intertropical regions, if he did not accompany Mr. Oxley also on one of his expeditions, strongly advocated the hypothesis of that last-mentioned officer; but as Mr. Cunningham kept on high ground on his subsequent ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... any merciful regard for their bodily powers.[Footnote: This, however, is a point in which royal personages claim an old prescriptive right to be unreasonable in their exactions and some, even amongst the most humane of Christian princes, have erred as flagrantly as lius Verus. George IV., we have understood, was generally escorted from Balkeith to Holyrood at a rate of twenty-two miles an hour. And of his father, the truly kind and paternal king, it is recorded by Miss Hawkins, (daughter of Sir J. Hawkins, the biographer of Johnson, &c.) that families who happened to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... to which justice could not be done in Edinburgh, and which Bernard Barton was to try to get represented in London. In 1825 one of Bernard's volumes of poems had run into a fifth edition, and of another George IV. had accepted the dedication. Thus prompted to exertion, he worked too hard; banking all day and writing poetry all night were too much for him. Lamb, however, cheered up the dyspeptic poet. 'You are too much apprehensive about your complaint,' he wrote. 'I ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... camp; and most of it will stick very hard indeed. The moral is, do not throw any. If we can imagine Shelley and Queen Victoria arguing out their differences in another world, we may be sure that the Queen has long ago found that she cannot settle the question by classing Shelley with George IV. as a bad man; and Shelley is not likely to have called her vile names on the general ground that as the economic dependence of women makes marriage a money bargain in which the man is the purchaser and the woman the purchased, there is no essential difference between a ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... Scotland, and held the rank of major in the army. By Act of Parliament, on the 17th June 1824, the attainder of the family was removed, the title of Baron being conferred on Major Nairn. This measure is reported to have been passed on the strong recommendation of George IV.; his Majesty having learned, during his state visit to Scotland in 1822, that the song of "The Attainted Scottish Nobles" was the composition of Lady Nairn. The song is certainly one of the best apologies ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of the Hon. Lewis Wingfield, and may therefore be relied upon for accuracy in every respect. These series will repay careful study. The civil costumes start with those of two women, a shepherd, and a man of the period of William I. and wind up with samples of the era of George IV. It is impossible here to go into details, but it may be said that costume does not necessarily improve with time, as the dress of the last period is certainly the worst. The military uniforms begin with some suits of armour from the Tower, then proceed to ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... comprehended any knowledge at all of the blackletter period. But in this belief I was greatly mistaken, as I was afterwards fully convinced by the best evidence from various quarters. That library of 120,000 volumes, which George IV. presented to the nation, and which has since gone to swell the collection at the British Museum, had been formed (as I was often assured by persons to whom the whole history of the library, and its growth from small rudiments, was familiarly known) under the direct personal superintendence of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... influencing the Government in the right direction was of equal importance to the cause. The elaborate Act, still in force, by which previous legislation against the slave trade was finally consolidated and extended was passed in 1824 (5 George IV. cap. 113). It was drawn by my father and dictated by him in one day and at one sitting.[36] It fills twenty-three closely printed octavo pages. At this time the Government was attempting to adopt a middle course ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... Hogarth did; but France didn't please him, and he came home again, like Hogarth, with all convenient speed,—fortunately, without being clapped up in jail for sketching the gates of Calais. I believe that he has not crossed the Straits of Dover since George IV. was king. I have heard, on good authority, that he protested strongly, while in foreign parts, against the manner in which the French ate new-laid eggs, and against the custom, then common among the peasantry, of wearing wooden shoes. I am afraid even, that, were George hard pressed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various



Words linked to "George IV" :   King of Great Britain, House of Hanover, George, Hanover, Hanoverian line, King of England



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