An Impartial Report of all the Proceedings in Parliament, on the late important subject of a Regency.

£2,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A detailed account of the parliamentary and political debates on the 1788-9 Regency Crisis. From the library of Lloyd Kenyon - Lord Chief Justice during the Crisis, and containing substantial manuscript material in his hand. This volume collects various records of the parliamentary and political proceedings underpinning the Crisis. Division results are published, as are transcripts of the debates in the House of Lords, reports from George III’s physicians, correspondence between Pitt and the Prince of Wales, and addresses from the parliaments of Britain and Ireland. During the Regency Crisis, systems of royal succession overlapped with issues of party politics. George III had suffered a severe episode of mental instability in the summer of 1788, and would spend the remainder of the year entirely incapacitated. In Parliament, the opposing Whig and Tory parties debated the constitutional foundation for a regency under the Prince of Wales (later George IV). Rather unexpectedly, the Whigs (under Fox) argued that the Prince enjoyed a sovereign right to a fully-empowered regency; the Tories (under Pitt) argued that, with no statutory basis to that effect, any right to determine the nature and limits of a prospective regency lay with Parliament alone. The outcome of the Crisis would thus have substantial political ramifications, as victory for the Prince and the Whigs would have swiftly led to the ejection of Pitt’s Tory ministry. Given Fox’s most unWhiggish position on the Crisis,

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