Well, if it’s 2 August, it must be… yes, of course: 237th anniversary of the time Margaret Nicholson tried to stab George III, but failed to do him any damage — not least because her weapon of choice was “an old ivory-handled dessert knife”.
There is a dramatic telling of the incident in novelist Fanny Burney’s diary that day, which suggests that being right-handed and having the knife in her left might have been part of Margaret’s difficulty
You may have heard it wrong; I will concisely tell it right. His carriage had just stopped at the garden-door at St James’s, and he had just alighted from it, when a decently dressed woman, who had been waiting for him some time, approached him with a petition. It was rolled up, and had the usual superscription — For the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. She presented it with her right hand; and, at the same moment that the King bent forward to take it, she drew from it, with her left hand, a knife, with which she aimed straight at his heart!
The fortunate awkwardness of taking the instrument with the left hand made her design perceived before it could be executed; the King started back, scarce believing the testimony of his own eyes; and the woman made a second thrust, which just touched his waistcoat before he had time to prevent her; and at that moment one of the attendants, seeing her horrible intent, wrenched the knife from her hand.
In The Politics of Regicide in England, 1760–1850, however, historian Steve Poole says “As the King recoiled, she was prevented from making a second lunge by a yeoman and a footman who pulled her away to the guard house”.
Either way, Burney suggests that the king’s first concern was for his tailoring.
…and that he then called for restraint in dealing with her (and we can speculate that he’d seen that her knife thrust was half-hearted, or that the blade was useless for the task, but it’s still pretty magnanimous of him)
Perhaps Fanny is laying it on a bit thick here, though (keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte though she was):
There is something in the whole of his behaviour upon this occasion that strikes me as proof indisputable of a true and noble courage: for in a moment so extraordinary — an attack in this country, unheard of before — to settle so instantly that it was the effect of insanity, to feel no apprehension of private plot or latent conspiracy to stay out, fearlessly, among his — people, and so benevolently to see himself to the safety of one who had raised her arm against his life — these little traits, all impulsive, and therefore to be trusted, have given me an impression of respect and reverence that I can never forget, and never think of but with fresh admiration.
Anyway, the Privy Council, Poole says, “ruled her unfit to stand trial for high treason” and, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Margaret was “declared insane and, on the order of the home secretary, committed to Bethlem for life”.
Mind you, in her lodgings was
a cache of letters to public figures, replete with the delusion concerning her rightful claim to the throne, warning that ‘England would be discharged with blood for a thousand years if her claims were not publicly acknowledged’.
Margaret remained in Bethlem Hospital for the remaining 42 years of her life, but was not the first or indeed last of George III’s would-be assassins. One Rebecca O’Hara got in first by lunging at him in 1778, and quite a few people threw stones over the years. But the most spectacular attempt was definitely James Hadfield’s, when he fired a pistol at George in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1800.
Barrister Thomas Erskine argued that severe head injuries sustained in battle had caused his client’s delusions, and the jury found him not guilty — but the judge said he “must not be discharged”, and
Parliament quickly passed the Criminal Lunatics Act 1800 that provide for indefinite and automatic confinement for insane defendants.
Only one other person came at George III with a knife during his reign — but he did face fewer assassination attempts than his granddaughter, who totted up an impressive eight.
