Caroline fever, Robert Chaloner and the North Riding Whigs

This article explores Whig efforts to secure popular support through a case study of events in the North Riding of Yorkshire (and the adjacent part of south Durham) in 1820. Encouraged by the local Whig elite, particularly the York MP Robert Chaloner of Guisborough, the region momentarily captured national attention through its spirited celebrations of the Tory Government’s failure to secure a divorce for George IV from Queen Caroline. The divorce affair was an opportunity for the Whigs to enlist popular support, without any commitment to parliamentary reform. Characterised as ‘the violent party’ by Tories in parliamentary elections for York in 1820, Chaloner and his radical allies effectively closed down public discussion of the Caroline affair by loyalists. However, the alliance forged by the Whigs with popular radicalism was temporary; it tainted them in the mind of the political nation and hence contributed to their long-running exclusion from power at Westminster.