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It was a summer afternoon in June 1727.
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The King's chief minister, Sir Robert Walpole,
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turned up unannounced at the country residence of
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George, Prince of Wales and his wife Caroline.
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He was out of breath and in a state of great panic.
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Walpole was the bearer of momentous news.
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King George I was dead.
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Sir Robert Walpole tried to get in
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to see the Prince and Princess of Wales but the lady-in-waiting said,
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"Stop! You can't go in. They're asleep."
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But Sir Robert Walpole insisted.
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He said, "I've got to go in with my news."
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And the poor old Prince of Wales was rather caught on the hop.
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At the moment when he learned that he'd become King George II
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of Great Britain and Ireland,
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he was probably still buttoning up his breeches.
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There was an element of farce about this
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and George as King would have to up his game.
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No more afternoon naps for him!
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Four months later, George was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
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The coronation anthem Zadok The Priest
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was specially composed for the occasion by Handel.
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It accompanied George's transformation from Prince to King.
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MUSIC: "Zadok The Priest" by George Frideric Handel
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George II's reign would be long and turbulent.
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German born, he found himself ruling a Britain that was
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heading into the future at lightning speed.
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New money had forged a new middling sort of people in society
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who questioned the established order.
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Affairs of state were being discussed in taverns
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and coffee houses.
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And the royal family found themselves mocked in newspapers,
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in satirical prints and in the theatres.
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It would have been difficult for any dynasty
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but this lot were still new. They only had shallow roots.
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This was a very dangerous moment for the Hanoverian royal family.
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If any one of them were to make a mistake,
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it could break the monarchy.
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But this was the most dysfunctional royal family since the Tudors.
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Their feuding would shake the state to its foundations.
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The first Georgian kings have fascinated me for years.
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And for this series,
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I've been given access to pieces from the Royal Collection as they're
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prepared for an exhibition at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
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These works of art, many of them commissioned or owned
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by the first Georgian kings,
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reveal how they had to adapt to a public
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who were no longer merely just subjects.
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And in doing this, the Hanoverians invented the modern monarchy.
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This is George II's bed.
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At first glance, it may look like any other grand Georgian bed.
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But actually, this is his travelling bed,
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which could be collapsed down into 54 separate pieces -
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the original flat-pack.
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The fact that George needed a special bed for travelling
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tells us something important.
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He was always, it seems,
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popping off back to Hanover.
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This was a real problem for his British subjects.
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It looked like George's heart still lay in his homeland.
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His absences reminded the British that he was alien -
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that he had another country to think about as well as Britain.
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To many of them, George became the King who wasn't there.
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And as well as the small matter of ruling both
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Hanover and Britain, much of the King's time
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was taken up by his mistresses,
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which was really quite annoying to his long-suffering,
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but loyal, German wife.
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Let me introduce you to Caroline. She is my favourite queen.
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As you can see from the bust, she's not exactly a fairy-tale princess.
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She's middle-aged, she's overweight,
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she's had eight children.
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But she had this wonderfully warm and witty personality.
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It made her very good at her job as Queen, welcoming people to court.
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But there was much more complexity and depth to her than that.
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You do get a sense that she was bored
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and sort of blunted by her royal duties.
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She would rather have been cracking jokes
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with her clever friends somewhere else.
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And I think that if you look at the corner of her mouth here,
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it's twitching, like she's about to start laughing.
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While the King was prickly and distant,
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Caroline was highly sociable.
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In her private apartments at Hampton Court,
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she gathered together a sparkling circle of intellectuals and wits.
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Caroline, at heart, was a warm and convivial person.
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She loved to eat and she loved to talk.
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The British courtiers really relished the way that she could
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remember little personal details about each of them.
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She'd say things like,
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"My Lord, how is your little girl? Is she better?"
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Or one of them remembered that,
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"The Queen was so interested in my print collection
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"that I had to go home
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"and get all of the rest of my books to show her."
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Because of her husband's poor social skills,
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Caroline becomes the user-friendly public face
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of the Hanoverian monarchy.
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She was its likeable and approachable ambassador.
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Caroline wielded enormous power and influence,
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especially over her husband.
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This made her an indispensable ally
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to the King's leading minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
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As Prince of Wales, George had been wary of Walpole,
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calling him a rogue and a rascal.
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But Caroline persuaded George as King to keep Walpole on.
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It proved to be a smart move. Walpole could get things done.
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Walpole was the ultimate fixer.
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He spent a lot of time whispering into people's ears.
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"What about job X for person Y?"
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If you wanted your son to be a captain in the Army, for example,
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Walpole was your man.
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His power was cemented when the King gave him
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this house in Downing Street.
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He accepted it not as an individual but on behalf of his office,
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which was First Lord of the Treasury,
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as it still says on the front door.
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This job title is better known to us today as Prime Minister.
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Downing Street was Walpole's reward for his ability to provide
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a stable government and a lavish budget for the King's court.
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A year into his reign,
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George began making preparations for his first trip to Hanover as King.
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Now, who was going to rule Britain?
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Well, Parliament passed the Regency Act,
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putting Queen Caroline in charge.
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And this confirmed what a lot of people already thought -
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that Caroline was the one who wore the trousers.
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As the popular poem had it...
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Caroline worked hard to strengthen the Georgian dynasty.
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And one way she did it was by publicly encouraging
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the intellectual upheaval, generally called the Enlightenment.
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As Princess of Wales, Caroline had brought about a breakthrough
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in the fight against smallpox.
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The disease was attacking the population, people said,
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like a destroying angel.
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Professor of medicine Gareth Williams
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is going to show me the grim details.
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What we've got here are the three key stages of the smallpox rash.
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So we've got the early vesicles here. Here are the pustules,
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getting quite nicely developed.
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And over there is the stage of the confluent rash.
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This is where all the pustules are full of pus
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and there are so many of them that you're left with something like that.
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- My goodness!
- It was one of the great killers.
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Smallpox actually killed one person in 12.
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What happens in the early 18th century? There's a change, is there?
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Well, they got reports from Turkey of a way of preventing smallpox,
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reported by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
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who was a bit of a girl, and she was the wife of the ambassador to Turkey.
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She heard about an extraordinary practice,
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which was giving a healthy child smallpox deliberately.
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And it sounds completely counterintuitive but, in fact,
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it was actually one of the safest
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and one of the most effective medical procedures of the day.
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How did Caroline, who was then the Princess of Wales,
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- get to hear about it?
- Well, it was through Lady Mary.
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She became a good personal friend of Princess Caroline,
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the Princess of Wales.
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Caroline said, "Well, OK, let's see the evidence."
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So the evidence was quite bold, actually.
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Lady Mary had her daughter inoculated with smallpox the following spring -
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this was in 1721 -
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and it was a really good time to do this experiment because smallpox
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had broken out in London and people were running scared again.
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So Caroline is convinced that this really works
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and it seems to me that the most important thing that she does
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is to inoculate her own children.
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Exactly right. But the broader issue is, yes,
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you've got a royal who's engaged,
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you've got a royal who's phenomenally bright
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and actually interested in not just the people and their problems
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but in scientific and medical solutions for those problems.
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It was this scientific approach
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that separated Caroline and the Hanoverians
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from their Stuart predecessors.
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The Stuarts had often laid their hands upon the sick,
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believing they had semi-divine powers of healing.
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But Caroline placed her trust in medicine, not magic.
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The French philosopher Voltaire commented on smallpox
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in his book Letters On England.
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He said that Europe thought the British crazy
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for this business of making a well child sick.
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Voltaire tells us that inoculation really caught on.
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"England followed her example," he says,
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"and since then at least 10,000 children
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"owe their lives to the Queen and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
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"And as many girls are indebted to them for their beauty."
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Voltaire's book also highlighted other great changes
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under way in Britain.
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He noted how commerce had enriched the citizens,
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helping to make them freer.
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This freedom had, in turn,
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made greater entrepreneurship possible, widening wealth overall.
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And nowhere was this more true than in London.
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Here, economic changes were creating a new kind of behaviour.
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There was lots of new money in Georgian Britain -
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a lot of it in the hands of a new rank of people in society.
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They weren't aristocrats and they weren't the workers, either.
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They were what was called the middling sort.
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Some of them were professionals,
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like doctors and lawyers and clergymen.
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Others ran shops or they were in trade,
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particularly in the new products of sugar and cotton.
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And like all these people here at the market,
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they had money to burn on things that they didn't really need,
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like vases for their houses
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or trips to the pleasure gardens
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or really expensive cups of coffee.
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This emerging middling sort differentiated Britain
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from its continental neighbours,
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where the aristocracy still held sway.
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And with this new social class came new spending power.
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In 1720, a Yorkshireman called Charles Clay came to London,
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hoping that some of this new money would come his way.
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His particular wheeze was to construct
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miraculously elaborate clocks,
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which he then displayed to the public for a fee.
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Rufus Bird is going to show me one of Clay's craziest creations.
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It was originally called The Temple And Oracle Of Apollo.
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It is an organ clock which, curiously,
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has this magnificent 17th-century
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Augsburg casket resting on top of it.
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And then in the pedestal,
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you have this organ which plays ten different tunes arranged by Handel.
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How does it actually work?
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If we open this door here, you can see inside there is the weights
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and the pulley and then the barrel organ itself. I can play a tune.
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- Shall we play one?
- Yes, let's hear it.
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JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS
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And who was he making it for? What was the point of it?
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It was a commercial enterprise.
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We know that through the advertisement which his widow placed
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in a newspaper in 1743. And I've got a copy of it just here.
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Mrs Clay describes this work of art as being,
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"The whole exceeding by many degrees anything ever exhibited
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"to public view in any nation or by any artist whatsoever."
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- Amazing! And it's yours for a shilling.
- That's right.
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You can see this, and hear it, for one shilling.
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50 years earlier, Charles Clay would have been making
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a specialised item like this for a royal patron.
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But in this new Georgian age,
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Clay could use his clocks to make a living from very different patrons -
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paying customers.
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This early Georgian period was fast becoming
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the age of the self-made man.
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There was one individual who epitomised this - Alexander Pope.
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Pope was a satirist with legendary bite,
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who coined classic phrases like,
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"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
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But Pope is remembered as much for his business nous
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as his heroic couplets.
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00:16:05,360 --> 00:16:08,120
He showed that a writer could earn a fortune
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00:16:08,120 --> 00:16:11,240
by selling his work directly to the public.
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00:16:12,480 --> 00:16:15,960
And his success allowed him to live in some style.
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00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:20,760
Although his grand villa in Twickenham no longer stands,
256
00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:24,920
one intriguing part of it has survived - a grotto.
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00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:33,080
This is not just an exciting underground grotto,
258
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:36,160
it's also a museum of mineralogy.
259
00:16:36,160 --> 00:16:40,480
Look at this crystal set into the walls there. It's winking at me.
260
00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:43,520
And originally there were little fragments of mirror
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00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:47,200
stuck in amongst the stones so when you came down here with a lamp
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00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:51,000
and you turned it on, suddenly rays were shooting everywhere
263
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,600
and the whole thing was glittering. Ooh!
264
00:16:53,600 --> 00:16:57,200
Now, I think that is a piece of the Giant's Causeway.
265
00:16:57,200 --> 00:17:00,320
You can see the six sides of the basalt there.
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00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:02,200
And there is a picture
267
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:05,560
that shows Alexander Pope doing some writing down here.
268
00:17:05,560 --> 00:17:08,280
But you'd think it was a bit dark for that.
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00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:16,040
Now, how did he pay for all of this? The answer is this book.
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00:17:16,040 --> 00:17:20,360
This is the pocket version of his famous translation
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00:17:20,360 --> 00:17:22,800
of the Iliad by Homer.
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00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:26,640
And he made money out of his work like a modern author would.
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00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:31,560
He didn't have a single rich patron funding his lifestyle.
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00:17:31,560 --> 00:17:35,040
He sold individual copies to a broad range of people.
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00:17:35,040 --> 00:17:37,960
If you look at the first deluxe edition of the book,
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00:17:37,960 --> 00:17:42,280
you'll see the list of subscribers - headed by Caroline.
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00:17:42,280 --> 00:17:45,480
So she was acting here as a new type of patron.
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00:17:45,480 --> 00:17:48,360
She's just buying the book, giving him some money,
279
00:17:48,360 --> 00:17:51,840
but - more importantly - offering him her moral support
280
00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:55,760
so that other people would buy the book, too. And they did.
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00:17:55,760 --> 00:18:00,560
It made him the equivalent in today's money of £400,000 -
282
00:18:00,560 --> 00:18:03,920
what he needed to buy his villa and to build his grotto.
283
00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:09,720
Pope was very proud of the way he'd achieved all of this independently.
284
00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:12,360
He said, "I live and I thrive
285
00:18:12,360 --> 00:18:16,440
"not indebted to any prince or peer alive."
286
00:18:24,280 --> 00:18:27,920
However, Alexander Pope was only 4'6",
287
00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:31,840
suffered from curvature of the spine and was a Catholic, too.
288
00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:34,280
He was always an outsider.
289
00:18:35,800 --> 00:18:40,960
When he said he was in no-one's debt, he really did mean it.
290
00:18:42,040 --> 00:18:46,360
Pope decided to write his own version of Homer's Iliad.
291
00:18:46,360 --> 00:18:48,360
But his was going to be in English
292
00:18:48,360 --> 00:18:50,760
and it was going to be a great big spoof.
293
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:53,800
The poem was called the Dunciad.
294
00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:58,200
From the very start of the Dunciad, it was clear that not even
295
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:02,320
the royal family are safe from Pope's poisonous pen.
296
00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:06,200
"You by whose care, in vain decry'd and curst,
297
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:11,760
"Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first."
298
00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:14,240
Who do you think that he meant by that?
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00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:18,720
This blatant reference to George II
300
00:19:18,720 --> 00:19:23,000
kicks off a depiction of a society dominated by dimwits,
301
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:25,760
and ruled by a king of the dunces.
302
00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:31,200
He was under the thumb of a female character called Dullness.
303
00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:34,840
She was very dreary and rather fat, too,
304
00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:37,520
and by this, Pope meant Caroline.
305
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:44,440
"Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
306
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:48,520
"She rul'd, in native Anarchy, the mind."
307
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:53,240
She'd been his big supporter as Princess of Wales
308
00:19:53,240 --> 00:19:57,000
but when she became Queen, she had other fish to fry.
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00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:00,840
Pope felt that he'd been neglected so he turned against her,
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00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:04,080
using his very wounding weapons of words.
311
00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:06,200
He basically says in the Dunciad
312
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:09,240
that she's a bit of a porker and rather boring.
313
00:20:11,520 --> 00:20:15,360
But just as Pope's relations with Caroline turned sour,
314
00:20:15,360 --> 00:20:19,000
another member of the royal family was ready to take advantage.
315
00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:24,200
Prince Frederick, Caroline's son and heir to the throne,
316
00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:26,600
befriended the poet in her place.
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00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:27,960
He was even painted
318
00:20:27,960 --> 00:20:31,840
with a copy of Pope's translation of Homer in his hand.
319
00:20:31,840 --> 00:20:35,880
Caroline now had a rival in her patronage of the arts.
320
00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:57,840
Frederick was a genuine music lover.
321
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:02,600
Sometimes he'd give a concert by an open window as the evening fell,
322
00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:04,880
playing his cello.
323
00:21:04,880 --> 00:21:06,400
And all the court servants
324
00:21:06,400 --> 00:21:09,000
would creep out into the courtyard to listen.
325
00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:14,720
Frederick's parents felt that this was undignified behaviour - vulgar.
326
00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:16,840
Entertaining the masses?!
327
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:22,440
You could forgive Frederick
328
00:21:22,440 --> 00:21:25,800
for thinking that his parents had abandoned him.
329
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:29,360
When he was seven, they left him behind in Hanover
330
00:21:29,360 --> 00:21:33,200
when George and Caroline came over to London in 1714.
331
00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:36,120
There were good political reasons for this -
332
00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:39,200
Frederick was going to be the family's representative in Hanover
333
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:42,080
so that the people there wouldn't think they'd been
334
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:43,680
entirely forgotten about.
335
00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:45,880
The problems emerged years later
336
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:49,640
when Frederick came over to London himself, now a grown-up.
337
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:52,480
It wasn't just that he'd lost touch with his parents
338
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,840
and needed to rebuild the relationship,
339
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:56,440
it was worse than that -
340
00:21:56,440 --> 00:22:00,560
It turned out that he and his parents couldn't stand the sight
341
00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:01,600
of each other.
342
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:05,040
And it was this hostility
343
00:22:05,040 --> 00:22:08,680
that would pose the greatest threat to the Georgian monarchy.
344
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:17,880
Frederick's openness and his social nature were in marked contrast
345
00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:21,000
to his grumpy father George II.
346
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:25,560
The Prince of Wales's common touch would be perfectly captured
347
00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,600
in a painting by the artist Joseph Nicholls.
348
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:33,800
This is St James's Park on a summer evening
349
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:36,160
and everybody's out for a walk.
350
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:39,280
A French visitor tells us that sometimes the park was so packed
351
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,880
that you couldn't help touching your neighbour.
352
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,880
He says that some people came to see, others to be seen -
353
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:49,480
all on the lookout for adventures.
354
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:52,440
He says that there were many priestesses of Venus
355
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:53,560
about in the park.
356
00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:55,840
And the brilliant thing about this painting is that
357
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:59,920
it's like a snapshot of the whole of Georgian society.
358
00:22:59,920 --> 00:23:02,040
We have lowlife characters here,
359
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:05,280
like these ladies feeding their babies.
360
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:07,120
Here is kissing going on.
361
00:23:07,120 --> 00:23:08,720
Here is a man taking a leak.
362
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:10,120
We also have commerce -
363
00:23:10,120 --> 00:23:13,240
these ladies are selling cups of milk to the gentry.
364
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:17,240
Over here, we have high society.
365
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:19,880
This lady is taking snuff.
366
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:24,040
This foppish gentleman is doing a very fancy French sort of bow.
367
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:29,600
And right at the centre of all this is Frederick, the Prince of Wales.
368
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:32,880
And that's what makes it such a British scene.
369
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:36,120
In France, the King was stuck out at Versailles.
370
00:23:36,120 --> 00:23:39,880
He was aloof and remote from his people.
371
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:44,320
But Frederick thinks of himself as the people's prince.
372
00:23:44,320 --> 00:23:47,800
He's got the popular touch. He's on a royal walkabout.
373
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:49,960
You can see people turning to watch him.
374
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:52,280
And this is very typical of Frederick.
375
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:56,360
He doesn't position himself above the crowd but right at its centre.
376
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:09,000
The royal court was no longer setting the rules
377
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:10,480
for fashionable life.
378
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:14,720
And Frederick responded by joining in the contemporary craze
379
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:19,000
for refined but informal gatherings.
380
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:24,160
This was reflected in a new kind of painting - the conversation piece.
381
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:29,560
Rather than formal group portraits, conversation pieces showed people
382
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:33,080
actually enjoying each other's company.
383
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:36,200
Here's a lively dinner party
384
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:39,880
with the host dishing out lots of drinks,
385
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,000
guests fumbling with each other
386
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:47,240
and a fat clergyman looking on with worldly satisfaction.
387
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,720
Even the royal family were depicted in this new style of painting.
388
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:02,120
This is an oil sketch for a conversation piece
389
00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:03,400
of the royal family.
390
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:06,440
It was done by the artist William Hogarth on spec.
391
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:10,440
His hope was that the King would really like it and that he'd buy it.
392
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:12,960
It's got all the hallmarks of a conversation piece.
393
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:15,080
It's a family scene -
394
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,280
mother, father, the children all talking to each other.
395
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,360
But there are three very good reasons that George II
396
00:25:21,360 --> 00:25:23,600
was never going to buy this picture.
397
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:27,600
Firstly, William Hogarth wasn't an artist in favour at court.
398
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,160
There, the work was dominated by his rival,
399
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:33,000
Queen Caroline's favourite artist William Kent.
400
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,200
Secondly, the very idea that George II would buy
401
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,840
a piece of avant-garde art is ridiculous.
402
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:41,240
He didn't like art at all.
403
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,040
And thirdly, it's a bit of a farce cos it looks like a happy family
404
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:47,760
but, in fact, this lot hated each other.
405
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,120
There were terrible rivalries and tensions
406
00:25:50,120 --> 00:25:52,560
between these parents and these children.
407
00:25:57,440 --> 00:25:59,360
Fortunately for Hogarth,
408
00:25:59,360 --> 00:26:03,120
he didn't actually need royal patronage to be successful.
409
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:07,400
Like Alexander Pope, Hogarth was a freelancer
410
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,240
with an entrepreneurial streak.
411
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,360
This is his very nice pad in Chiswick.
412
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:16,280
That he could afford it
413
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:19,760
shows how well he understood what his customers wanted.
414
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:23,880
And what they wanted was prints -
415
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,120
the original affordable art.
416
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:32,960
Britain went wild for these characters and these images
417
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:37,000
but what most people were seeing wasn't Hogarth's own work.
418
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,040
To keep things exclusive, he'd only produce enough prints
419
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:44,000
to go to his list of just over 1,000 subscribers.
420
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:45,520
But almost instantly,
421
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:50,000
his rivals and copycats started to produce cheap knock-offs.
422
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,040
The speed with which they did this was incredible.
423
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:56,240
It was almost before the ink had dried on the originals.
424
00:26:57,360 --> 00:27:01,200
A set of Hogarth prints - and of these knock-off copies too -
425
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,320
can be found in the Royal Collection.
426
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:08,080
I'm meeting senior curator Kate Heard to see how they differed
427
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:11,680
and what, if anything, the artist could do about it.
428
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:13,120
So I'm a subscriber.
429
00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:16,240
I've paid my money to Mr Hogarth and the print is going to come out.
430
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:17,640
What am I going to get?
431
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,560
You're going to get six prints, of which this is the first one,
432
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:22,080
showing the harlot,
433
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:24,440
of The Harlot's Progress, arriving in London.
434
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,920
- Oh, dear! She's a fresh young girl.
- Absolutely.
435
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:28,800
We know that it's going to be bad.
436
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:32,600
Hogarth made 1,240 of them and refused to make any more.
437
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,560
One of his great selling points was that it's an exclusive thing.
438
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:37,000
You subscribe, you pay upfront,
439
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:38,880
you're one of the club that can have them.
440
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,160
What did you do if you weren't a subscriber, then,
441
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:42,880
but you wanted to own these images?
442
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:47,160
Well, you could actually get hold of slightly different copies -
443
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:49,680
not the real thing, but pirated copies,
444
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:53,200
which were rushed out by the print sellers within a few weeks.
445
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:55,200
It's reversed, as well, isn't it?
446
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,920
Yes, that's because they're copying the original print.
447
00:27:57,920 --> 00:27:59,920
So somebody's drawing it - here it is -
448
00:27:59,920 --> 00:28:02,280
and then he puts the ink on and he turns it over.
449
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:04,760
And turns it back to front on the sheet of paper.
450
00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:09,720
They're not bad prints, considering how quickly they were made.
451
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:12,680
And how did Hogarth respond to this? What action did he take?
452
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:16,160
He was furious. He'd had his initiative taken away from him
453
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,200
and he got together with a group of fellow printmakers
454
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,920
and they petitioned Parliament which, in 1735,
455
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:26,400
published a Copyright Act, which allowed people like Hogarth,
456
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,840
for 14 years, to have copyright over their images, over their prints.
457
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:32,040
And if you copied the prints, you would be punished?
458
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:35,960
- You would be fined.
- And that law stood all the way until 1911.
459
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,480
It was a very impressive piece of legislation.
460
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,680
- Was it known as Hogarth's?
- It's known as Hogarth's Act. Absolutely.
461
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:47,080
If prints were popular, newspapers were even more so.
462
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,000
During the course of the 18th century, newspaper production
463
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,800
would rise from one million to just over 14 million a year.
464
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,320
You didn't even need to purchase a copy yourself.
465
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,280
Newspapers were available for browsing
466
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:08,200
in your neighbourhood coffee house.
467
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:15,320
What's really surprising is just how well informed people were.
468
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,640
Imagine that you and I are reasonably well-off,
469
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:25,520
reasonably intelligent Georgian chaps.
470
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:29,120
Before spending the afternoon at the pleasure garden or the theatre,
471
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:32,000
perhaps we're going to pop into the coffee house
472
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,000
to have a read of the newspapers.
473
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,920
What sort of information is available to us
474
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,000
in the London Journal of 1732?
475
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,480
Well, an enormous range.
476
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,320
Page one tells us about foreign affairs.
477
00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:47,920
We've got a report from Paris.
478
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:50,760
Page two gives us a report from Hanover,
479
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:52,760
where the King is this week.
480
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,320
We've got a very detailed account of what he's up to there.
481
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,000
On page three, we've got a brand-new fruit
482
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,720
that's just been presented to Queen Caroline.
483
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,200
It's ripe and in a state of utmost perfection
484
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,200
and it is a pineapple, a complete novelty.
485
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,120
Now, you and I are not members of the court.
486
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,240
We're members of the public and this is an enormous
487
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,960
range of information that we've got access to.
488
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:20,000
Our kings and queens aren't just faces on a coin -
489
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,680
they're real characters in our minds.
490
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:24,400
This isn't just a newspaper -
491
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,920
it's an information superhighway.
492
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,080
And now the world and his dog
493
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:32,240
can have a well-informed opinion on current affairs.
494
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,440
What's more, the world and his dog
495
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,480
weren't going to keep their opinions to themselves.
496
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,800
Georgian coffee houses were called the "penny universities".
497
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:57,000
Pretty much blind to social status, they often hosted debating clubs.
498
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,520
There was more to this than just passing the time.
499
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:02,880
The Georgians had this new belief that you could refashion yourself
500
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:07,920
into a person of taste by soaking up the right kind of books and ideas.
501
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,040
To discuss all this, I'm meeting up with Lucy Inglis,
502
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,760
creator of the blog Georgian London.
503
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,880
Is this about self-improvement?
504
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,000
Is this about Georgian people wanting to learn from each other?
505
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:25,880
Yes, very much about self-improvement.
506
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:28,480
The new concept of the rising middle classes
507
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:32,600
and what it was to educate yourself and improve yourself.
508
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,000
And there was also this idea that there was
509
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,440
only so much knowledge in the world and it could be known and mastered
510
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:40,400
if you were only willing to apply yourself.
511
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:41,560
That's a brilliant idea -
512
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:44,560
you could read every single book that existed if you tried hard.
513
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:48,560
- Pretty much, yeah, yeah.
- What's this you've got here on your computer?
514
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:51,280
This here is some information that I've gathered
515
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,280
about one society in particular, the Robin Hood Society.
516
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:56,280
They met every Monday evening.
517
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:58,360
And what did they get up to in these meetings?
518
00:31:58,360 --> 00:31:59,960
Well, they said, first of all,
519
00:31:59,960 --> 00:32:03,120
that even though they would enjoy a Welsh rarebit and a pot of beer,
520
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:06,040
it was not a drinking club - it was a disputing one.
521
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:07,960
At those places, men feed their bodies
522
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,040
but at this one, they feed their mind.
523
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:11,960
And what sort of people attended?
524
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:15,880
Well, we have a list of members of the club here -
525
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:19,520
a baker, a doctor, a governor of the plantations, a soldier,
526
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,120
an author, a comedian, a house painter, a genius...
527
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:23,280
- A genius?
- A genius, yes.
528
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:25,640
So he's put that down as his profession - a genius.
529
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:29,520
- He was a genius. A noted bug doctor and a highwayman.
- No way!
530
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:31,800
- A highwayman attended the club?
- Yeah, absolutely!
531
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:33,080
A professional highwayman?
532
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,960
- Yeah, he was thought to be one of the best debaters but he...
- I bet!
533
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:37,800
Did he use his gun?
534
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:39,960
Yeah, he couldn't stay off the roads
535
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,920
- and he sadly met a sticky end at the end of a rope at Tyburn.
- Oh, dear!
536
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:46,880
- I know.
- A loss to the club, I would think.
- Yes.
537
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:48,920
So here we have a network of people
538
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:52,960
who have only been brought together by the club itself.
539
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,560
- They're from different ranks in society.
- Yes.
540
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:59,320
And that is one of the key points of all these clubs -
541
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:03,040
that they were deliberately bringing people together from all levels.
542
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:05,800
What did the King and the government think about these clubs?
543
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:07,920
Sometimes they were debating questions like,
544
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:09,400
"Is the Prime Minister any good?"
545
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,840
- This is quite dangerous.
- Absolutely. Very dangerous.
546
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:15,160
The Robin Hood Society tried to get around this by publishing
547
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:18,080
their set of rules and things they weren't going to discuss,
548
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,880
which was politics and God.
549
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:24,360
- However, they did discuss both.
- Oh, that was just for show, then?
550
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,240
- "We're not going to discuss this, but really we are."
- Exactly,
551
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:30,760
which is why the members were supposed to be known to each other,
552
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,560
so that you knew if you had a spy in the camp.
553
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:39,720
This culture of debate meant that the decisions of King and Parliament
554
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:41,680
were held to public scrutiny.
555
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:53,720
In 1733, Sir Robert Walpole introduced an Excise Bill
556
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:57,760
to Parliament, imposing a tax on popular commodities
557
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,280
like wine and tobacco.
558
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,720
Now, nobody likes a new tax,
559
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:06,800
especially not the self-confident new London trading classes.
560
00:34:08,240 --> 00:34:10,200
There were riots outside Parliament
561
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:13,840
and Queen Caroline and Robert Walpole were burned in effigy.
562
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,680
Crucially, though, the King stood by his minister.
563
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:21,160
He let it be known that
564
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:25,120
to oppose his government was to oppose the King himself.
565
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:28,200
If you went against Walpole, then you were a traitor.
566
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:34,960
One of Walpole's opponents in Parliament was Lord Cobham.
567
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,720
He had been a great supporter of the Hanoverian monarchy.
568
00:34:38,720 --> 00:34:40,600
But, for his disloyalty,
569
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,840
the King ejected Cobham from the House of Lords.
570
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,680
Cobham retreated to his country house at Stowe.
571
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:52,720
Here, he planted his revenge
572
00:34:52,720 --> 00:34:56,480
in the form of Stowe's magnificent landscape garden.
573
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:10,920
In Georgian Britain, even gardening was political.
574
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:15,240
The landscape garden was supposed to embody British liberty.
575
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:21,680
A place where, as one Georgian put it, "The eye can roam free."
576
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:31,880
But Stowe also delivered a more pointed message.
577
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,440
Cobham hid within it a series of secret meanings
578
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:39,360
or metaphors for contemporary politics and morality.
579
00:35:40,560 --> 00:35:42,520
Now, you weren't expected to work out
580
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,320
all of these hidden secret meanings all by yourself.
581
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:47,760
You could buy a guidebook to the gardens,
582
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,040
like this original Georgian version.
583
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:54,200
And it tells me that at this spot here, I have a decision to make.
584
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:58,440
I can either turn up that way, which is the path of virtue.
585
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,440
Up there we have temples dedicated to virtue
586
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:03,400
and the heroes of history.
587
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,600
Or I can go down that way.
588
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:07,480
That's the route of vice.
589
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:10,920
Down there the book promises me lustful monks,
590
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:14,240
women out of control, group sex and voyeurism.
591
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:22,400
The garden at Stowe certainly drew in the crowds.
592
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:26,520
And Lord Cobham had thoughtfully built this inn on the outskirts
593
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:28,040
to accommodate them all.
594
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:35,520
The tourists who chose the path of virtue crossed a series of bridges
595
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:39,840
to illustrate that a virtuous life is never without its obstacles.
596
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,400
But I'm on the path of vice,
597
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:47,000
where visitors get titillation alongside moral instruction.
598
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:52,800
One of the stopping-off points is the Temple Of Venus.
599
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,480
The book tells me that the paintings in here
600
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,040
tell the story of this lady, who runs away from
601
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:01,200
her disagreeable husband and goes instead
602
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,200
to revel with a beastly herd of satyrs,
603
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:07,400
these famously lascivious creatures.
604
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:10,440
So it's basically a temple to naughty women.
605
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:13,360
But we're still in the vice area of the garden, don't forget,
606
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,160
so we know not to follow their example.
607
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,560
Let's go on improving our characters somewhere else.
608
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:23,120
But Cobham intended his garden
609
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,880
to offer something more than just moral instruction.
610
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:30,960
Stowe also reads like a political pamphlet,
611
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,520
Cobham's own State Of The Nation address.
612
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:37,720
And some of these messages seem to be aimed directly
613
00:37:37,720 --> 00:37:40,760
at Frederick, Prince of Wales.
614
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:44,440
Cobham and his group of opposition politicians had identified
615
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,520
the Prince as a potential leader for their cause.
616
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:53,680
At the heart of the garden is the Temple Of British Worthies.
617
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,280
Here I'm meeting Richard Wheeler to find out how
618
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:02,680
this pantheon of British heroes is actually an attack on George II.
619
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:06,960
Obviously, there's politics going on here.
620
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,200
He's chosen some characters but not others.
621
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:10,880
What was he trying to express?
622
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,640
Well, there's a subtext going on here, because he'd just broken
623
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:15,960
from Sir Robert Walpole's Whig Party
624
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:18,960
to form his own internal Whig opposition, the Whig Patriots.
625
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:24,080
So we have King Alfred, the mildest, justest, most beneficent of kings -
626
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:26,720
everything that King George II the second was not.
627
00:38:26,720 --> 00:38:29,760
And beside him Edward, the Black Prince, the terror of Europe,
628
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:31,240
the delight of England -
629
00:38:31,240 --> 00:38:34,440
everything to which Prince Frederick aspired.
630
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,400
And, of course, Prince Frederick was the titular leader
631
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,040
of the Whig opposition to Sir Robert Walpole.
632
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:42,960
Why was Cobham so much against Sir Robert Walpole?
633
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,480
Because he was our first Prime Minister
634
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,240
and the idea of a Prime Minister was deeply objectionable -
635
00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:51,520
that one person should rule was dictatorial, absolutist
636
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:53,760
and everything that was wrong.
637
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,040
So, according to the guidebook, King Alfred's been picked out because
638
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:00,600
he guarded liberty and he was the founder of the English Constitution.
639
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:02,480
This is all significant, isn't it?
640
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,080
English Constitution is probably the most significant,
641
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:07,920
because if anything works at Stowe
642
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:12,120
it's the idea of our old Gothic Constitution deriving from
643
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:15,160
the Witan, the parliament of the Saxons.
644
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:18,720
So we have Alfred here, the greatest of the Saxon kings.
645
00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:22,560
And on the hill behind, you've got the Saxon Temple,
646
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,680
which is otherwise known as the Temple Of Liberty.
647
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:30,640
So it's all anti-autocracy and the main point of which was that
648
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:34,040
Parliament chose the King, as it did in Saxon times.
649
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,240
I think a lot of this is instruction for Prince Frederick,
650
00:39:37,240 --> 00:39:40,320
telling him how to behave if he's going to be a patriot king.
651
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,520
One has to remember that Lord Cobham and all his compatriots
652
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:45,960
were the ones who brought the Hanoverians over.
653
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,080
But they've got to remain under control.
654
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,880
So it's the Whig oligarchy who are actually running the country
655
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,320
and the King as a constitutional monarch.
656
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,640
So the idea of the constitution - really important.
657
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,240
And the King really doing what he was told.
658
00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:02,360
And guess what? There's no Germans here at all.
659
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:04,920
No, they're all over in the other side in the garden of vice.
660
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:06,600
I don't quite know why but there it is.
661
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,240
None of this was lost on Frederick, who would commission an opera
662
00:40:13,240 --> 00:40:16,440
in honour of Alfred, the great patriot king.
663
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,600
OPERA SINGING
664
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:30,400
Frederick was emerging as the leader of the opposition.
665
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:35,360
So his parents tried to rein him in by suppressing his allowance.
666
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:44,200
The simplest way for a prince to up his income was to get married.
667
00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:47,520
But George and Caroline had deliberately put off
668
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:49,240
finding their son a wife.
669
00:40:49,240 --> 00:40:54,000
Poor Fred was left on the shelf until he was almost 30.
670
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:58,600
In April 1736, his parents finally relented.
671
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:04,800
The German princess, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha became Frederick's wife.
672
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:06,200
Luckily for Augusta,
673
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:09,800
Frederick liked his princess bride and got his pay rise.
674
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,120
But he was disappointed when it turned out to be
675
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:16,280
only £50,000 a year, half of what he had been expecting.
676
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:20,520
Now there was open conflict between the prince and his parents.
677
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:23,400
This was the beginning of an annus horribilis
678
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:25,160
for the Georgian monarchy.
679
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:30,160
And when the King left for Germany yet again,
680
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:33,880
his courtiers felt the force of public opinion.
681
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:38,400
People got so fed up with George constantly going off to Hanover,
682
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,360
that a mysterious spoof notice appeared,
683
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,120
stuck to the gates of St James's Palace.
684
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:49,000
It read, "Lost or strayed out of this house,
685
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:53,000
"a man who has abandoned a wife and six children."
686
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:57,080
A reward was offered for information of four shillings and sixpence,
687
00:41:57,080 --> 00:41:59,720
but you weren't to expect any more money than that.
688
00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:04,160
"Nobody judging him to deserve a crown."
689
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:12,000
Prince Frederick's camp were furious that he hadn't been made regent.
690
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,640
Caroline was once again running the show,
691
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:19,000
and she was back in full social reformer mode.
692
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,680
Once her target had been smallpox.
693
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:26,280
But she now wanted to clamp down on a new blight sweeping London,
694
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,640
the craze for gin.
695
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:32,360
Londoners thought that if beer came by the pint,
696
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:35,440
so too should this new drink called gin.
697
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,560
By the 1730s, they were addicted to gin.
698
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:42,080
They were drinking two pints per head per week.
699
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:46,440
His Majesty's government decided to reduce gin consumption
700
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:50,440
by increasing the price. They put a big new tax on gin.
701
00:42:50,440 --> 00:42:53,640
This went down very badly with Londoners.
702
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:56,080
There were riots about the gin tax.
703
00:42:56,080 --> 00:43:00,640
Liquor shops were draped in black to mourn the death of gin drinking.
704
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:04,400
And there was an ominous new chant amongst the crowds on the street.
705
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:09,160
They went, "No gin, no king. No gin, no king."
706
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,560
What did Prince Frederick do to calm down the situation?
707
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:17,000
Well, nothing at all. In fact, he inflamed it.
708
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:21,000
He was seen going to a tavern and drinking a glass of gin.
709
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,400
And by doing this he was saying,
710
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:27,640
"I'm just like you. I like gin and I don't like the king."
711
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:34,520
Frederick's ingratiating ways incensed Caroline.
712
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:38,920
"My God," she said, "popularity always makes me sick,
713
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:43,200
"but Fred's popularity makes me vomit."
714
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:46,360
A storm was brewing.
715
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:54,400
In December 1736, King George was returning from Hanover
716
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,160
when his ship was caught in a violent gale.
717
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,160
Rumours reached London that he'd been lost at sea.
718
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:12,840
Caroline was distraught and also disgusted at Prince Frederick,
719
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,800
who was clearly relishing the prospect of becoming King himself.
720
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:19,760
For a week, the country held its breath.
721
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:22,440
Many were wishing that the King had drowned.
722
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:26,000
But finally, news arrived that he was safe and well.
723
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:33,800
Back in London, George II now had to deal with his upstart son
724
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,480
and mounting political opposition.
725
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,640
One of the best mouthpieces for dissident voices was the theatre,
726
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:47,520
perhaps the most subversive art form in Georgian Britain.
727
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,920
Not surprisingly, Prince Frederick
728
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,040
had already associated himself with the stage.
729
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,680
He had written his own comedy, The Modish Couple.
730
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:02,960
Here at the Bristol Old Vic, an original Georgian theatre,
731
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:07,080
its artistic director, Tom Morris, can explain how the stage
732
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,400
provided a platform for mocking the ruling order.
733
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,680
We're standing on a stage here.
734
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:17,880
It's not the way people think of a modern theatre.
735
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:21,480
We're not kind of shut away from the audience somewhere up there.
736
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:23,680
We're surrounded by them.
737
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,680
And what's more, it's manifest in the architecture of the building
738
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:30,000
that different members of the audience
739
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:32,160
will have a different point of view.
740
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:35,000
Someone sitting over there will necessarily have
741
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:37,520
a different point of view of this conversation
742
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:40,680
than someone sitting over there. It's like a reverse shot.
743
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,960
If, as an actor then, that person is booing and that person is cheering,
744
00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:47,920
can you sort of shut them out and go with them?
745
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,880
Absolutely. We know that there were asides in Georgian theatre.
746
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:53,480
If you play an aside in a theatre like this, you choose
747
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:56,120
who you play it to and you choose who you don't play it to.
748
00:45:56,120 --> 00:46:00,320
- Ah, right!
- So you can constantly manipulate the relationship
749
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:01,640
with the audience.
750
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,240
When you look at 18th-century plays,
751
00:46:04,240 --> 00:46:06,640
they appear to be incredibly naughty.
752
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:09,520
They're always satirical, they're always causing trouble,
753
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,240
they seem to be against power and authority.
754
00:46:12,240 --> 00:46:15,440
Yeah, I mean Tom Thumb, which is a pretty tough read,
755
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:20,000
I have to say, is largely a sequence of knob jokes about Robert Walpole,
756
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,680
which obviously he hated. Now if you read the script,
757
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,800
he's not going to say that, he can't quite say that,
758
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:30,000
because it's all negotiated live with sort of double entendre
759
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:33,760
in this kind of theatre, where something can be implied,
760
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:38,400
a joke aimed here can be shared to the exclusion of those people,
761
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:44,040
and meanings are kind of fluid, immediate and transitory.
762
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:47,840
And that makes it very threatening, politically.
763
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:52,960
In 1737, Sir Robert Walpole would try to bring the curtain down
764
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:58,800
on seditious theatres, citing a play that mysteriously hasn't survived -
765
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:00,560
The Golden Rump.
766
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:05,080
The details of the play itself are a bit mysterious.
767
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,120
But you can get a hint of what it was about
768
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:12,040
from this contemporary print, called The Festival of the Golden Rump -
769
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:15,160
the focus of the scene is the King's bottom.
770
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:17,840
And this itself was the focus of Georgian society
771
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:21,920
because of the habit the King had at turning his back on people
772
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:24,040
who were out of favour at court.
773
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:26,640
If the King didn't want to speak to you, he would turn around
774
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:28,560
and show you his backside,
775
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,800
a technique that everybody called rumping.
776
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:34,960
Also, everybody knew that part of the reason the King
777
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:36,320
had such a bad temper
778
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:40,200
was because he suffered terribly from the haemorrhoids.
779
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:43,040
In this print, the King is shown as a satyr,
780
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,120
a creature that's out of control.
781
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,280
And it's lashing out - in this case the satyr is kicking
782
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:52,960
a magician-like figure who represents Sir Robert Walpole.
783
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:56,560
But don't worry, sensible Queen Caroline is here,
784
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,560
the mistress of medicine. She's going to bring the King
785
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,280
back under her control by giving him an enema.
786
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:07,440
She's injecting a magic potion up the royal bum.
787
00:48:09,720 --> 00:48:11,680
It's quite amusing to think
788
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:14,720
that this play was only performed in public
789
00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:16,480
in the House of Commons.
790
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,200
What happened was that Sir Robert Walpole claimed
791
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:21,520
he'd been given a manuscript version of it,
792
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,320
and in order to show how offensive and scandalous it was,
793
00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:27,320
he read it out in Parliament.
794
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:31,000
Of course, everybody went, "This is terrible! We can't have this!"
795
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:36,240
From now on, there would only be two licensed theatres in London.
796
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,720
And all new plays had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain.
797
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:48,880
But there's a very attractive conspiracy theory here.
798
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:52,560
I like this one. The idea is that perhaps Sir Robert Walpole
799
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:54,760
cooked the whole thing up himself.
800
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:57,720
Perhaps he commissioned the scandalous play
801
00:48:57,720 --> 00:49:02,600
in order to create the outrage and to get his censorship law passed.
802
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:07,920
In February 1737,
803
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:12,880
Frederick took the feud with his father right into Parliament.
804
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:14,640
His supporters backed a motion
805
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,040
to get the Prince's allowance increased.
806
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:21,640
Frederick's side lost by only a few votes.
807
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:26,360
This was the most public affront yet by the Prince to the King.
808
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:40,160
And to make matters worse,
809
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:44,640
Frederick and his wife, Augusta, had moved into Kensington Palace...
810
00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:50,560
..where Frederick's habits quickly began to grate on his mother.
811
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,440
The palace was so claustrophobic
812
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,240
that Caroline had to come out into the gardens
813
00:49:57,240 --> 00:49:59,880
to get a bit of privacy. She loved walking.
814
00:49:59,880 --> 00:50:02,880
She'd clack along in her slippers with red heels.
815
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:06,240
Other times, though, she was trapped indoors.
816
00:50:06,240 --> 00:50:08,160
Once, she was looking out of the window,
817
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:11,760
and she saw Frederick crossing the courtyard beneath her,
818
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:15,880
and she was heard to say "There he goes, that monster!
819
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:20,320
"How I wish that a hole from hell would open up and swallow him."
820
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:29,120
In July 1737, this feud finally came to a head.
821
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,480
The royal family had assembled at Hampton Court
822
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:39,400
to witness the arrival of Frederick and Augusta's first child.
823
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:45,120
But Frederick was determined to keep his parents away from the birth.
824
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:49,840
Augusta's labour pains began in the middle of the night.
825
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:51,920
Now, you'd expect them to call the midwife
826
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:54,000
and keep her in bed, but no.
827
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:56,320
Her husband Frederick made her get up.
828
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:00,400
He made her walk down the stairs, and he bundled her into a carriage
829
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:03,960
to drive 15 miles through the night to St James's Palace.
830
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:10,080
Now, poor Augusta was a teenager. She was in a foreign land.
831
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:13,840
This was her first pregnancy, and she spent her first labour
832
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:16,760
in a bumpy carriage in the middle of the night.
833
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:20,560
This is terribly cruel behaviour on Frederick's part.
834
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:23,080
Augusta was writhing about in agony,
835
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,720
and Frederick held her down with his weight.
836
00:51:25,720 --> 00:51:29,560
He used so much force that he later said he put his back out doing it.
837
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:35,360
When they arrived at St James's Palace, they weren't expected,
838
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:37,240
so nothing was ready for them.
839
00:51:37,240 --> 00:51:39,600
There weren't even any sheets for the bed.
840
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:42,760
And when the little baby girl was eventually born,
841
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,080
they had to wrap her up in a table napkin.
842
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:53,120
Frederick was successful
843
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:56,200
in tricking his parents out of their privilege
844
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,520
of being present at the birth of their grandchild.
845
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:01,360
When Caroline heard what had happened,
846
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:03,440
she too got up in the middle of the night
847
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:07,480
and came dashing to St James's Palace, but she was too late.
848
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:09,720
The baby was already born.
849
00:52:09,720 --> 00:52:12,280
The next day, there was an almighty bust-up,
850
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:16,760
and everybody knew about it. It got into the newspapers.
851
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,960
This was a very dangerous moment for the Hanoverian monarchy.
852
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,280
Both sides were damaged.
853
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:24,960
George II looked like he couldn't even control his family,
854
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:27,720
and as for Frederick, he looked irresponsible.
855
00:52:27,720 --> 00:52:30,000
He'd risked the life of his wife.
856
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:33,600
How could he be trusted with the future of the nation
857
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:35,760
when the time came?
858
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:40,320
And worst of all, there was no prospect of reconciliation.
859
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:44,720
This quarrel looked set to continue to the grave.
860
00:52:47,240 --> 00:52:49,360
It would take just that, a death,
861
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:52,720
to make the royal family and the country take stock.
862
00:52:55,280 --> 00:53:01,920
In November 1737, in her brand-new library at St James's Palace,
863
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:05,680
Caroline was suddenly stricken with intense pain.
864
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:14,400
What was actually wrong with Caroline? Well, nobody knew.
865
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:17,600
The doctors weren't allowed to examine her body.
866
00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:20,280
There was a sense that this would have been undignified,
867
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,720
and also an idea that queens weren't really made out of flesh and blood,
868
00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:26,280
that they were never ill.
869
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:29,040
But poor Caroline was clearly in agony.
870
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:32,120
She was put to bed, and eventually the King insisted
871
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,760
that the doctors have a look at her stomach.
872
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:36,600
And then they discovered
873
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,760
that ever since the birth of her last child,
874
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:44,560
Caroline had been suffering in secret from an umbilical hernia.
875
00:53:44,560 --> 00:53:48,200
This is when a hole opens up in the walls of the stomach.
876
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:49,600
It's terribly painful.
877
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:52,360
Caroline had come to her crisis
878
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:57,880
because a little loop of her bowels had popped out through that hole.
879
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,960
What the doctor should have done is get the bowels,
880
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:03,160
push them back in and sew up the hole.
881
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,200
That's what they would do today.
882
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:08,960
But Caroline's doctors made a terrible mistake.
883
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:10,600
That little loop of bowels,
884
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,160
they cut it off.
885
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:24,680
Throughout all of this, Caroline kept up her good spirits.
886
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:27,800
When the doctor came in to operate, she encouraged him
887
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:31,960
by saying, "Dr Ranby, just pretend you're cutting up your ex-wife."
888
00:54:33,160 --> 00:54:35,120
Her only concern seemed to be
889
00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:38,280
for the grief of her husband and her children.
890
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:47,400
George II now devoted himself to her care. He sat by the bed in tears.
891
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:50,280
And when she was at death's door,
892
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:53,360
they had this very famous conversation.
893
00:54:53,360 --> 00:54:59,320
She said to him, "I want you to be happy. Marry again after I'm gone".
894
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:03,320
But he said "No. I will have mistresses."
895
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:07,360
The implication was that the mistresses meant nothing to him.
896
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,160
He would never have a second Queen.
897
00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:14,560
And when she died, it was with her hand in his.
898
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:23,920
And where was Prince Frederick?
899
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:25,720
Despite the estrangement,
900
00:55:25,720 --> 00:55:28,680
he had asked to come to his mother's bedside,
901
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:31,760
but the King had forbidden it. "Frederick", he said,
902
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:36,280
"shall not come and act any of his silly plays here."
903
00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:42,440
When Caroline had heard this, she had deferred to her husband.
904
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:46,160
But later, she sent a private message, a blessing,
905
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:48,080
and forgiveness to her son.
906
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:54,840
A piece of street poetry summed up the public reaction.
907
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:58,200
"Death, where is thy sting,
908
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,280
"to take the Queen and leave the King?"
909
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:08,200
And what of the King?
910
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:16,160
Here is sad and lonely George, all by himself, missing his wife.
911
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:18,160
He's gone to her library
912
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:21,840
to have a look at the bust of her over the door.
913
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:25,040
This was a real low point for George II.
914
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:28,280
Not only had he lost his companion of 30 years,
915
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:31,400
he had also lost an important political ally.
916
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:36,640
She had been the friendly face of his regime.
917
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:42,560
He would eventually recover and, old soldier as he was,
918
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:46,560
go on to enjoy military victories over the French and the Scots.
919
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:57,040
This period saw the development of a well-informed and pugnacious public,
920
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:00,080
a new force that challenged the old elite.
921
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:04,400
The world had changed, and sooner or later,
922
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:09,400
every monarchy across Europe would have to come to terms with it.
923
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:11,760
If you were an 18th-century king or queen,
924
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:13,280
you had two choices here.
925
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,720
Either you could ignore all of this and hope that it went away -
926
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:20,560
that's what they did in France, and look what happened to them -
927
00:57:20,560 --> 00:57:22,640
or you could subtly change the way
928
00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,160
in which you went about being a monarch.
929
00:57:25,160 --> 00:57:28,680
In Britain, it was Queen Caroline and Prince Frederick
930
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:30,360
who really understood this,
931
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:34,920
so much so that I think they rather overshadowed George II.
932
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:39,800
Caroline had tried to help the British, promoting science
933
00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:43,640
and philosophy and social improvement.
934
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:46,240
And Frederick had embraced the people,
935
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:49,520
placing himself amongst the crowd, rather than above it.
936
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:55,160
They somehow knew how to ease the friction between the monarchy
937
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:58,960
and the people, and I think we can judge their success
938
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:01,320
by the fact that 300 years later,
939
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:04,480
their descendants are still on the throne.
940
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:15,280
Next time, as Britain seeks to rule the waves,
941
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:20,480
King George's love of fighting helps him overcome the death of his queen,
942
00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:25,040
renewing his sense of kingship as he leads his troops into battle.
943
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:28,680
"Now, boys!" he said.
944
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,400
"Fire and be brave, and the French will soon run!"
78409
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