death_date birth_date signature reign father house death_place coronation spouse image name occupation caption predecessor succession birth_place moretext successor mother religion article_title
20 june 1837 21 august 1765 william iv signature.svg 26 1830 & nbsp ; -- 20 june 1837 june 1830 -- 20 june 1837 26 june george iii house of hanover windsor castle , berkshire 8 september 1831 adelaide of saxe-meiningen william iv crop.jpg william iv military -lrb- naval -rrb- portrait by sir martin archer shee , 1833 george iv george iv king of the united kingdom king of hanover buckingham house , london -lrb- more ... -rrb- victoria ernest augustus i charlotte of mecklenburg-strelitz anglican william iv of the united kingdom

william iv of the united kingdom

william iv -lrb- william henry ; 21 august 1765 -- 20 june 1837 -rrb- was king of the united kingdom of great britain and ireland and king of hanover from 26 june 1830 until his death .
the third son of george iii and younger brother and successor to george iv , he was the last king and penultimate monarch of britain 's house of hanover .
william served in the royal navy in his youth and was , both during his reign and afterwards , nicknamed the `` sailor king '' .
he served in north america and the caribbean , but saw little actual fighting .
in 1789 , he was created duke of clarence and st andrews .
since his two older brothers died without leaving legitimate issue , he inherited the throne when he was 64 years old .
his reign saw several reforms : the poor law was updated , child labour restricted , slavery abolished in nearly all the british empire , and the british electoral system refashioned by the reform act 1832 .
though william did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father , he was the last monarch to appoint a prime minister contrary to the will of parliament .
through his brother , the viceroy of hanover , he granted his german kingdom a short-lived liberal constitution .
at the time of his death william had no surviving legitimate children , but he was survived by eight of the ten illegitimate children he had by the actress dorothea jordan , with whom he cohabited for twenty years .
william was succeeded in the united kingdom by his niece , victoria , and in hanover by his brother , ernest augustus i.
