We may turn for a moment from the path of politics to mention a fact that is worth mentioning, if only because of the immense difference between the accepted usages of that time and any usages that would be possible in our days. King William shortly after his accession created his eldest son Earl of Munster, and conferred upon all his other sons and daughters the rank that belongs to the younger children of a marquis. The King's living children, as has been said before, were all illegitimate. In raising them to the rank of the peerage King William was only following the example of many or most of his predecessors. People thought none the less of him, at the time, because he had bestowed such honor upon his progeny. Charles Greville, the famous Clerk of the Council to George the Fourth and William the Fourth, describes the new sovereign with characteristic frankness and lack of reverence. "Altogether," says Greville, writing about a fortnight after the King's accession, "he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, not stupid, burlesque, bustling old fellow, and if he doesn't go mad may make a very decent king, but he exhibits oddities." The early bringing-up of the new King had certainly not tended much to fill him with the highest aspirations or to qualify him for the most dignified duties of royalty. "Never," says Greville, "was elevation like that of King William the Fourth. His life has hitherto been passed in obscurity and neglect, in miserable poverty, surrounded by a numerous progeny of bastards, without consideration or friends, and he was ridiculous from his grotesque ways and little, meddling curiosity." {115}