DEATH OF THE KING, AND ACCESSION OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE, WILLIAM IV.
About the end of May a favourable turn of the disorder of his majesty gave rise to a hope of his recovery. This feeling, however, was soon dispersed, for the chest became affected, the lungs completely decayed, blood was mingled with the expectoration, and general debility rapidly ensued. His end was evidently near; and a short time before it took place his physicians intimated to his majesty that all further endeavours to avert the stroke of death would be unavailing. He calmly answered, “God’s will be done,” and subsequently received the sacrament from the hands of the Bishop of Chichester. Soon after his voice became faint and low, and for several days his words were scarcely articulated; his sleep also was broken and disturbed. At length, on the night of the 25th of June, the angel of death once more approached the palace of the kings of England. He had slept little during the evening, and from eleven to three was in a restless slumber, opening his eyes occasionally when the cough caused great pain. At three o’clock his majesty beckoned to the page in waiting to alter his position, and the couch, constructed for the purpose, was gently raised, and the sufferer lifted to his chair. At that moment, however, a blood-vessel burst, and his attendants hastened to apply the usual stimulants, and to call in the physicians. The royal patient himself perceived that his dissolution was at hand, and exclaimed, “O God, I am dying!” then in a few seconds he added, in a whisper scarcely audible, “This is death!” and when the physicians entered the apartment George IV. had ceased to breathe.
The decease of the monarch had become so much an object of daily expectation, and for years he had lived so much retired from his people, that his death excited less sensation than commonly follows that of English monarchs. Moreover, George IV. was not one of the most popular monarchs in English history.
As soon as the decease of his majesty was known, his next brother, William Henry, Duke of Clarence, was proclaimed by the title of William IV. The new monarch in a short time rendered himself very popular by the plainness of his habits and manners, and by the condescension, or rather the familiarity of his intercourse with his people—qualities which rendered him more popular by a comparison with the secluded life of his predecessors. No immediate change took place in the government, for his majesty, after the usual oaths for the security of the church of Scotland, having signed the instruments requisite at the commencement of a new reign, re-appointed the judges and other great officers of the state to the places which had become vacant, and signified to the members of government that he desired to retain their services.