Historical reality
A typical view of history is Churchill’s comment that in 1820, “Popular feeling against the conditions of England was now diverted into the condition of the monarchy.” This implies that the whole country was absorbed in the domestic confrontation between King George IV and his wife Caroline. It seems more likely that the nation was mildly interested in the affairs at court but still unsettled and forming associations that would become the Labour Party and the Trade Unions. If one digs into the state of the monarchy one finds that in 1787 Parliament had granted £161, 000 to cover the future George IV’s debts; that in 1818 his brother William (IV) married a wealthy woman to obtain enough money to cover his debts. As Prince of Wales, George was fat and greedy yet historians refuse to dismiss him in the same way as the struggles of the ordinary people in the land. 1820 was not the time of a constitutional crisis for the monarchy. It is recorded in many places that the ‘rebels’, either those at Peterloo the year earlier, or those in Scotland in 1820 never questioned the need for a monarchy, their argument was with the people who controlled their daily lives. The spat between George and Caroline may have been headline news for those who could afford a newspaper but the stream of history was elsewhere among those toiling day by day for their loaf of bread. George and Caroline left no more than a blot on a small insignificant page of history, the insurrection of 1820 marked the beginning of a flood that swept aside old attitudes towards slavery and the labouring classes in general. Many who fled the aftermath of the Scottish insurection fought with distinction on the side of the Union in the American Civil War.