King William IV
1765 – 1837 · Generation XXXII · King of the United Kingdom (r. 1830–1837) · House of Hanover
William IV (1765–1837). King of the United Kingdom (r. 1830–1837). Married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1818. The “sailor king”; his legitimate children died in infancy, so the crown passed to his niece Victoria. His naval youth took him to British North America and the Caribbean, and in 1827 he was made Lord High Admiral, the first in over a century. Coming to the throne at sixty-four, he presided over a burst of reform: the Reform Act of 1832 remade how Parliament was elected, new limits were placed on child labour, the Poor Law was revised, and slavery ended almost everywhere in the empire. He was the last British monarch to appoint a prime minister against Parliament's will, and he gave Hanover a liberal constitution that his successor there soon revoked. For twenty years he had lived with the actress Dorothea Jordan, who bore him ten children; at his death Hanover passed to his brother Ernest Augustus, ending its 123-year union with Britain.
One of 34 people of House of Hanover (from 1700) in this archive. Called from Germany by the Act of Settlement; the Georges, then Victoria.
Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → King William IV.
Parents
- King George III (1738 – 1820)
- Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744 – 1818)
Siblings
- King George IV (1762 – 1830)
- Frederick Duke of York (1763 – 1827)
- Charlotte, Princess Royal (1766 – 1828)
- Edward Duke of Kent (1767 – 1820)
- Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom (1768 – 1840)
- Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (1770 – 1840)
- Ernest Augustus King of Hanover (1771 – 1851)
- Augustus Frederick Duke of Sussex (1773 – 1843)
- Adolphus Duke of Cambridge (1774 – 1850)
- Mary Duchess of Gloucester (1776 – 1857)
- Sophia of the United Kingdom (1777 – 1848)
- Octavius of the United Kingdom (1779 – 1783)
- Alfred of the United Kingdom (1780 – 1782)
- Amelia of the United Kingdom (1783 – 1810)
Partners
- Married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (1792 – 1849) in 1818
Life
- 1765 — Born
- 1818 — Married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen
- 1830 — William IV succeeds his brother, George IV, at the age of 64
- 1833 — Abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire following a campaign by Quakers and William Wilberforce.
- 1837 — Died
- 1837 — William IV dies at Windsor Castle.