Catholic Emancipation

If you were a Roman Catholic (or Dissenter) during Jane Austen’s day, your social opportunities were very limited owing to the Test Acts. During the late 17th century, legislation was introduced so that only Anglicans could hold public office (military or civil), go to Oxford or Cambridge University, or study law. So Catholics (and Dissenters and Jews) were in effect banned from many professions. Catholics could not inherit land, or have their own schools. (The Book of Common Prayer still included a special service giving thanks for the nation’s deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot by rogue Catholics in 1605).

The Prince of Wales’ secret marriage to Catholic actress Maria Fitzherbert in 1785 put his succession to the throne in jeopardy – luckily for him, their union was illegal under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. 

By late Georgian times, religious groups began campaigning to repeal the Test Acts. But popular sentiment was against change – people believed that the church and state would be endangered if Catholic ‘emancipation’ was 

The Gordon riots.

granted. When even modest reforms were proposed, violent ‘No Popery’ protests, such as the ‘Gordon Riots’ of 1780, broke out in England and Scotland. It was not until 1829 that the Catholic Emancipation Act swept away most remaining civil disabilities for non-Anglicans.

Images:

An encounter between Mrs. Fitzherbert and Mrs. Schwellenberg (the Queen’s lady-in-waiting) each with a ‘second’: the Prince of Wales, his hands on his lady's waist, and William Pitt holding out a lemon to the furious German lady. C.1789. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-6452.

‘No Popery’ rioters burn down Newgate prison during the Gordon Riots of June 1780.  Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, Vol. VI, Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1864.

A Visit To Carlton House

Pride & Prejudice’s Mr Darcy could not ‘comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these’. In 1815, Jane Austen was given a personal invitation to visit one of the most splendid libraries in Britain, which belonged to the Prince Regent. The Prince was a noted patron of the arts and literature and loved Austen’s work.  

At this time, Jane was helping nurse her brother Henry through a nasty illness when one of his doctors, who also attended the Prince Regent, realized that Jane was the author of Pride & Prejudice. One day he told Jane that the Prince ‘often’ read her novels’ and ‘kept a set in every one of his residences’.  Accordingly he had informed the Prince she was in London.  His royal highness asked the librarian of Carlton House, James Stanier Clarke, to call on her. 

Clarke duly appeared the next day and invited Jane to Carlton House, so that he could show her ‘the library and other apartments, and pay her every possible attention’. Although Jane disapproved of the Prince Regent’s immoral lifestyle, she felt unable to turn down this high honour.  During her visit, Clarke told her that the Prince had given her permission to dedicate her next novel (Emma) to him, and upon publication, Austen’s publisher John Murray sent the Prince a handsome copy of Emma for his library. Clarke and Jane had a very funny correspondence in which he sent her a series of suggestions for her next work.

Carlton House was the Prince’s primary London residence from about 1783 onwards. Sadly, it was knocked down in the late 1820s as Prinny (now George IV) wanted Buckingham House to be revamped into a splendid new royal residence – now Buckingham Palace. However, you can see some lovely colour images of Carlton House here on Patrick Baty’s website.

Images:

The Prince Regent, 1822. Engraving by William Darton.

Tom and Jerry visit the Throne Room in Carlton House. It had crimson velvet drapes ornamented with gold-lace fringes, and its splendid carpet was made in England, at Spitalfields. Engraving by George and Robert Cruikshank, Life in London, Pierce Egan, (John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, 1869.)

The front of Carlton House, and the Grand Staircase, Old and New London Vol. IV, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1878).

All images from the author’s collection.

The Prince's Palatial Pavilion

The seaside town of Brighton (formerly Brighthelmston) became renowned for sea-bathing in about 1750, when Dr Richard Russell popularized sea-water as a cure for scrofula and other illnesses.
Russell moved his practice to Brighton, and lodging-houses for invalids soon sprang up in the town.   
George, Prince of Wales almost single-handedly lifted Brighton from genteel obscurity to a hugely popular resort. When he first visited the town in 7 September 1783, a military salute was fired in his honour. Sadly, one of the gunners who fired the salute was badly maimed when his gun exploded.
Of course the Prince of Wales could hardly stay in a lodging-house. At first he rented a farmhouse, but needed somewhere sufficiently elegant where he could entertain his guests. The farmhouse was first transformed into a villa by architect Henry Holland, but this was not grand enough for 'Prinny', and in 1815 he asked John Nash to construct him an Oriental palace.   

The Royal Pavilion was lavishly conceived and decorated, with exotic domes and gorgeous interiors glowing with richly-coloured Chinese lanterns, dragons, paintings, and exquisite wallpapers.
A visitor to Brighton in Austen's day might also have seen one of the military reviews which took place. Brighton Camp was formed in the fields to the west of Brighton in 1793. There was a review near Rottingdean in 1805 by the Inniskilling Dragoons and local militias, and five years later the Prince of Wales and his brothers, and 30,000 people watched a 'sham fight' at Race Hill (John Erredge, History of Brighthelmston, Brighton, 1862). 
In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bennet promises to take Kitty to a review if she is a 'good girl for the next ten years'.  When Wickham's regiment is posted to Brighton, and Lydia Bennet is invited to stay with Col. Foster and his wife, she dreams of ‘all the glories of the camp—its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once’.

Photos of the Royal Pavilion © Sue Wilkes.