Charles Turner, George IV when Prince Regent, 1813

Company officers became increasingly unhappy as Lindsay refused to include them in his consultations, and in 1772 the Company managed to have him recalled. Despite the Company’s discouragement, George III actively pursued a relationship with the Nawab. Portraits were exchanged of themselves and their families. The King even asked Muhammad Ali Khan to invest Lindsay and another Company officer, Major General Eyre Coote, with the Order of the Bath on his behalf. Yet by 1777, the Nawab was again forced to appeal to the King regarding the ‘interferences of your subjects with my family affairs’ and requested that George III become the keeper and executor of his will to ensure that his own wishes regarding his succession were fulfilled. The King agreed, and officials in London wrote to their counterparts in Fort St George: ‘You will take care that the original letter [from His Majesty] to the Nabob, herewith transmitted, be delivered to His Highness with every possible mark of respect and with all the ceremony usually observed on such occasions.’ For the next 20 years, the Nawab continued to complain to the King of the unjust actions of the Company and died in 1796 with his debts (over a million pounds sterling) unresolved. Both George III and George IV continued to foster their alliance with Muhammad Ali Khan’s successor, Umdat al-Umara (r. 1795–1801), who was, to the displeasure of the Company, enthroned in accordance with his father’s wishes. The Prince of Wales (fig. 18) sent a letter of support with a sword he had worn as commander of his regiment, along with one of his uniforms which the Nawab then adopted as the dress of his personal guards.

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