“The great curiosity of seeing the King’s new coach”

The rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence makes George III out as America’s great villain and antagonist of the Revolution.

But of course the king was just the visible embodiment of the British government. The ministry acted in his name, but he didn’t make all decisions. Though George III exercised influence, especially in the choice of ministers, but he wasn’t a tyrant dictating policy from his gilded carriage.

To be sure, he had a gilded carriage.

George III’s state coach survives at Buckingham Palace, as shown in this photo from Rachel Knowles’s blog.

This vehicle was commissioned soon after the young man came to the throne in 1760, designed by Sir William Chambers with decorative allegorical panels painted by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, an artist from Florence.

The coach cost more than £7,661, with £2,504 going to the carver, £1,673 to the coachmaker and wheelwright, £933 to the gilder, and £737 to the “lace-man.”

The coach made it public debut on at the opening of Parliament in October 1762. Richard Rigby reported to the Duke of Bedford:

The great curiosity of seeing the King’s new coach yesterday had filled the park and streets, by all accounts, fuller than they were at the coronation. I was above three hours upon the road from the end of Pall Mall to the middle of Parliament Street, where I was obliged at last to get into a chair and be carried a back way to the House of Commons.

In this crowd Lord Bute [the prime minister] was very much insulted, hissed in every gross manner, and a little pelted. It is said, but it is denied also, that the King was insulted.

Both Houses were up about four; the crowd of coaches and mob on foot not the least abated; it was so great that the King’s coach, with his Majesty in it, upon his return from the House was a full hour in Palace Yard. Lord Bute to avoid the like treatment he had met in going, returned in a hackney chair, but the mob discovered him, followed him, broke the glasses of the chair, and, in short, by threats and menaces, put him very reasonably in great fear; if they had once overturned the chair, he might very soon have been demolished.

Bute was out as prime minister in April 1763. (Though you wouldn’t know that from all the Whig cartoons and effigies that continued to blame him for royal policies over the next decade.)

The royal coach continued to roll out on ceremonial occasions. In October 1795 George III rode to another opening of Parliament. This time the crowd attacked the coach, breaking a window. People were reportedly calling, “Down with Pitt,” “No War,” “Give Us Bread,” and even “No George.” The satirical artist James Gillray portrayed the gold coach under attack from “republicans.”

“Any other individual than Rigby would have been disconcerted”

Recently I ran across a lively passage in Nathaniel Wraxhall’s memoirs of the debate in Parliament on 4 Mar 1782, as opponents of Lord North’s government pressed for an end to the American War.

M.P. Richard Rigby rose to speak. Wraxhall recalled:

Never could he have appeared more opportunely on the Scene, or at a Moment when his Exertions were more necessary to re-invigorate the ministerial Ranks. His very Figure and Aspect, unblushing, fearless, confident, as if formed to stem the Torrent of Opposition even when most violent, powerfully aided the Effect of his Oratory.

Rigby spoke with what Wraxhall described as “blunt, not to say contemptuous, Levity.” However, he defended the government’s ministers without continuing to endorse their American policy.

Rigby made a slip as he acknowledged that he had been paymaster of the British army since 1768, meaning he supplied the specie used to pay the soldiers and accumulated a steady profit from doing so. Wraxhall wrote:

Rigby having, in the Progress of his Speech, said rather unadvisedly, that “he was tired of the American War, though as Paymaster of the Forces, he was by no Means tired of receiving Cash;” which singular Expression he however qualified by adding, that “he could nevertheless speak his Opinion honestly, uninfluenced by his Place;” Mr. [William] Pitt remarked with great Severity on the Words. He observed, that “if the Right Honorable Gentleman was not tired of receiving, the Nation was weary of paying, Cash to a Person, who profited more by the War than any four Members of that Assembly.”

Almost any other Individual than Rigby, would have been disconcerted by so invidious a Comment, coming too from such a Quarter. But, he, far from shrinking back, or exhibiting the slightest Mark of Discomposure, stood up; and directing his Looks, as well as his Reply, to Pitt and [Charles James] Fox, who sate very near each other on the Opposition Side of the House, almost under the Gallery, “I will just venture to remark,” said he, “that however lucrative my Office may be, it has been held by the Fathers of the two Honorable Members who spoke last; and I make little Doubt that whenever I may be compelled to quit it, those Gentlemen themselves may have an Eye to getting Hold of it. I repeat, I am not at all tired of receiving Money; but I am not to be told, because I receive the Emoluments of my Place, that I am therefore the Author of my Country’s Ruin.”

Neither Fox nor Pitt attempted any Retort.

Squelch.

Still, Lord North resigned before the month was out. Fox and Pitt would vie to be prime minister. Rigby’s successors as paymaster would be two other opposition politicians, Edmund Burke and Isaac Barré. Elections had consequences.

[The thumbnail above is a sketch of Rigby from “series of small, whole length caricature portraits of prominent members of the Whig Coalition and opponents of the American War,” offered by Michael Finney Antique Books & Prints.]