Regency Culture and Society: Prinny’s Payment for Suppression

Once called “the most talented caricature that has ever appeared” due to its “admirable likenesses,” this 1804 James Gillray print is dedicated to “the admirers of a broad-bottom’d administration.” The National Portrait Gallery has a cool tool to identify the caricatures within the painting (NPG D13107; ‘L’assemblée nationale: – or – grand cooperation meeting at St Ann’s Hill’ – Portrait – National Portrait Gallery), which includes a veritable who’s who of the Whig party at Charles James Fox’s country estate.

The Prince was so incensed, he paid a reported large sum to suppress the image and have its plate destroyed, although it was secreted away and preserved:

Wright, T., Evans, R. H. (1851). Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray: Comprising a Political and Humorous History of the Latter Part of the Reign of George the Third. United Kingdom: Henry G. Bohn.

The British Museum has a thorough reading on all the action happening in the print  (print; satirical print | British Museum).