February 4th, 1820
I returned to Woburn on Sunday. We shot the whole week and killed an immense quantity of game; the last two days we killed 245 and 296 pheasants, 822 and 431 head. On Sunday last arrived the news of the King’s death.36 The new King has been desperately ill. He had a bad cold at Brighton, for which he lost eighty ounces of blood; yet he afterwards had a severe oppression, amounting almost to suffocation, on his chest. Halford was gone to Windsor, and left orders with Knighton not to bleed him again till his return. Knighton was afraid to bleed him. REIGN OF GEORGE IV. Bloomfield sent for Tierney,37 who took upon himself to take fifty ounces from him. This gave him relief; he continued, however, dangerously ill, and on Wednesday he lost twenty ounces more. Yesterday afternoon he was materially better for the first time. Tierney certainly saved his life, for he must have died if he had not been blooded. Brougham sent a courier to the Queen immediately after the late King’s death, and gave notice at Carlton House that he had applied for a passport for a courier to her Majesty the Queen.
The King has given to Lady Bloomfield the Rangership of Hampton Court Park. He wished to give it to both of them with the survivorship, but Lord Liverpool submitted to him that the House of Commons had pronounced so strongly their dislike to reversionary grants that it would be unadvisable, and it was accordingly given to Lady B. only.
Notes
36 [King George III. died on the 20th of January, 1820.]
37 [Sir Matthew Tierney, one of His Majesty’s physicians.]