The personal character and opinions of George IV. seem to have influenced politics less during the early years of his reign than during his long regency. His coronation was celebrated with unprecedented magnificence, and amidst external demonstrations of loyalty, hard to reconcile with the unbounded enthusiasm which the queen had so lately inspired. Soon afterwards, he sailed in his yacht from Portsmouth on a voyage to Ireland, but put into Holyhead and there awaited news of the queen's expected death. This reached him at last, and probably impressed him, no less than his ministers, as "the greatest of all possible deliverances, both to his majesty and the country".[68] He proceeded to Dublin in one of the earliest steam-packets, and secluded himself until "the corpse of his wife was supposed to have left England".[69] He then plunged into a round of festivities, and pleased all classes of Irishmen by his affable and condescending manners. He was, indeed, the first sovereign of England who had appeared in Ireland on a mission of peace. John William Ward, afterwards fourth Viscount Dudley in his letters, describes him as having behaved like a popular candidate on an electioneering trip, and surmises that "if the day before he left Ireland, he had stood for Dublin, he might have turned out Shaw or Grattan ".[70] Certain it is that his visit to Ireland was regarded as an important political event. The same kind of success attended his visit to Scotland in August of the following year, 1822. Thenceforth, he scarcely figures in political life until the resignation of Lord Liverpool in 1827, and though he consented with reluctance to Canning's tenure of the foreign office, he did not attempt to interfere with the change in foreign policy consequent upon it. He was, in fact, sinking more and more into an apathetic voluptuary; but he could rouse himself, and exhibit some proofs of ability, under the impulse of his brothers, the honest Duke of York and the arch-intriguer, the Duke of Cumberland.