Margaret Nicholson

Her futile and somewhat half-hearted attempt on the King's life became famous and was featured in one of Shelley's first works: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, published in 1810.

At the age of 12,[1] she was found a place as a maid, and from then worked as a servant in various notable households, including those of Sir John Sebright and Lord Coventry.

[3] On 2 August 1786, Nicholson approached the King as he alighted from a carriage at St. James's Palace on the pretext of presenting him with a petition, which was actually a blank piece of paper.

[3] The noted physician Dr John Munro, who was already well known for his testimony in the murder trial of Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, certified her insane and she was committed to Bethlem Royal Hospital for life under the Vagrancy Act 1744 on the order of the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney.

[8] He wrote that after "the interposition of Providence in the late attempt on my life by a poor insane woman" he "had every reason to be satisfied with the impression it has awakened in this country".

[11] In 1810, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg wrote and published a slim volume of burlesque poetry named after her, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.

Nicholson's incarceration in Bethlem Hospital was extrajudicial, and George's political opponents depicted it as the act of a tyrant bypassing the rule of law.