Sweeney Art Gallery | Collection

When this print was displayed in the Gallery, a number of people expressed bewilderment over its meaning and content. Fortunately, the late Professor John Phillips of the UCR History Department agreed most generously to write an explanation of the print's historic content for The Sweeney newsletter.

Monstrous Craws, At A New Coalition Feast was issued by the prolific cartoonist, James Gillray, in London in 1787. That most browsers at the Sweeney were puzzled is hardly surprising; Gillray’s work requires the sort of working knowledge of later eighteenth century British politics that many of his contemporaries possessed, but that virtually no one other than a few specialist historians can now emulate. Just as the work of modern political cartoonists, even those of the stature of Herb Bloch, quickly lose their power to convey their point, Gillray's effort would have posed a mystery to most members of an English audience even in 1850 and would completely mystify virtually every English viewer today. A southern California audience in 1996/7 is light-years removed from the concerns expressed by Gillray, but the point is easily explained, and in some ways illustrates the most mundane of matters; parents often find their offspring to be less than they might have hoped. It’s just that when the parents in question happen to be Royals, it often is a rather public embarrassment, and it may have major policy implications for the state. (I'm sure that Queen Elizabeth would sympathize deeply with the situation revealed in Gillray’s print.)

King George III, rather famous in the United States at present as the subject of the film, The Madness of King George, reigned in England in 1787. He had already been king for 27 years and he had 33 years to go. When George III acceded to the English throne, it still retained at least some nominal power, but Britain’s monarchy had lost ground steadily to Britain’s Parliament since the conjoint reign of William and Mary in the 1690s. By 1787, the person really wielding power in England was the Prime Minister, in this case William Pitt, who became Prime Minister in 1783 at the advanced age of 24 (making virtually every one since feel like an also-ran). High among the youthful Prime Minister’s responsibilities was the need to keep the King and his eldest son, the heir apparent, the Prince of Wales, from doing anything really stupid that might damage the country irreparably. With George III he had little trouble because for all of his faults, George III certainly tried to do his best. He was loyal, conscientious, reasonably intelligent, and hard working. He had determined from the beginning of his reign to do his duty, and by and large, he did it, until, of course, he went mad in 1788. And even while insane, George III continued to at least try to do the right thing. He struggled heroically and regained his sanity in 1789. His mental problems did not disappear, but he staved off the permanent padded cell and straightjacket until 1811. When lost completely to madness, George III became King in name only, with his heir serving as Prince Regent for nine years until his father died.

This heir apparent and the subject of Gillray’s print, on the other hand, was a ne’er-do-well of classic proportions. Many argue that George, the Prince of Wales, who ultimately took the throne as George IV when his father finally died, became England’s absolutely worst King of modern times despite intense competition from a number of very serious contenders for that title. (It remains to be seen if the current Prince of Wales will live up to this challenge. So far, he is doing quite well in the competition, and with just a little more of his special brand of very public, amazingly asinine behavior, he might just edge out his infamous predecessor.) Already in 1787 the Prince of Wales was proving himself to be a glutton, a spendthrift, a womanizer, and a liar. He also possessed a host of other extremely unbecoming characteristics that would take far too long to detail. Despite his youth, (he was just 25 in 1787) he had accumulated pressing debts of more than £160,000 (which is difficult to translate into a modern sum, but would have had the purchasing power of perhaps $2,000,000 today), and was accumulating more debt by the minute. (The current Sarah, Duchess of York, comes to mind.) Even worse, Prince George was nothing if treacherous, and he was determined to sell out his father, King George, at the earliest opportunity. And there were ample opportunities. Any opposition to George III’s government (namely P.M. Pitt) would try to use the heir apparent as its lynch-pin; they would pin their hopes on an early death of George III, or at the very least would just resolve to wait until the Prince of Wales eventually outlived the reigning King. Pitt needed to prevent a serious opposition to his government if possible, and thus needed to maintain some control over the Prince of Wales.

Facing this very sticky situation, William Pitt managed to achieve a temporary reconciliation between the two Georges by having Parliament pay off the Prince of Wales’ enormous debt and by increasing his government stipend as the Duke of Cornwall (one of the Prince’s many other titles) from £50,000 per annum to £60,000 per annum. Two of the golden ladles in Gillray’s caricature are labeled with these sums which are put in perspective by remembering that a typical working family at the time made about £75 in a good year. In return, the rotund, rotten, and redolent (he spent a fortune on perfumes) Prince promised to stop misbehaving and remain loyal to his father and his government, a promise as good as the many others he made and broke on a regular basis. The cartoon by Gillray illustrates this new and short-lived rapprochement between the King and his son, illustrating the new money in the form of gold guineas (coins worth a little over £1 each) being ladled into the "monstrous" but empty craw of the Prince of Wales, in sharp contrast to the very full craws of both King George III and his Queen, Charlotte, who were, if anything, excessively parsimonious. A psychologist might make something of the relationship between the miserly King and Queen and their profligate son, but historians are rightly reticent about drawing too many conclusions along these lines.

You might think Gillray extremely anti-monarchical from his lampooning of the Royal Family this way. And certainly Gillray was anti-monarchical when he perceived the monarchy behaving in ways he thought harmful to the country, which meant virtually every move made by the Prince of Wales. But England had enjoyed the benefits of a free press since 1695, and the cartoonists of 1787 could depict just about anyone in any fashion short of outright treason. The political history of the period is much richer for this marvelous trove of often striking political caricature. Gillray was perhaps the best of the lot, and there were many.