Hand coloured line engraving by John Fairburn.

King George IV's star is eclipsed by the crecent moon of Catherine of Brunswick while suspended in the sky over the Brighton Pavillion. In his right hand he holds a sack full of slanders. A commentary on the acrimonious public divorce of the King and the Queen Consort in the 1820s;

In the summer of 1820, Caroline of Brunswick, Queen Consort of George IV, was put on trial with a ‘Bill of Pains and Penalties’. It was intended to finally grant George his long sought-after divorce from his hated wife.

Caroline and George had married in 1795. They separated within a year of marriage and in 1814 she left Britain to travel abroad. While abroad it was alleged that she had engaged in an adulterous affair with a servant of the Royal Househould, Bartolomeo Pergami.

After Caroline’s return to Britain as Queen Consort upon the death of George III in 1820 the new King set about trying to get a divorce. The usual route would have been for King George to prove Caroline had been unfaithful while his own conduct had been beyond reproach – an impossible task for a King who was also a notorious philanderer.

Eventually the King set about using the arcane method of a Bill of Pains and Penalties to retrospectively criminalise his wife. This led to a painful public trial and involved the King and Court in a protracted scandal that saw his own popularity collapse and his estranged wife championed as a popular hero.