William IV of the United Kingdom
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send to the hotels for a list of their guests and invite anyone whom he knew to dinner, urging invitees 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 younger son (or daughter) of a marquess. Despite this his children importuned for greater opportunities, disgusting elements of the press which reported 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 required fresh elections and, in the general election of 1830, Wellington's Tories lost ground to the Whigs under Charles Grey, 2nd Earl 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. Lord Grey pledged to reform the electoral system, which had seen few changes since the fifteenth century. The inequities in the system were great; for example, large towns such as Manchester and Birmingham elected no members (though they were part of county constituencies), while small boroughs—known 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 would invariably be 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 able to sell them to prospective candidates. When the House of Commons defeated the First Reform Bill in 1831, Lord 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 before and the country was in a state of high excitement which might boil over into violence. He was, however, irritated by the conduct of
Reform crisis