The George IV pedimented state bed, with its 'obelisk' posts, emblematic of Eternity, supported by triumphal palm-wrapped bacchic lion-paws, was commissioned by Edmund Pollexfen Bastard (d. 1835) for Kitley, Devonshire, following its aggrandisement by architect George Stanley Repton (d. 1858). Repton, who was employed at Kitley shortly after the establishment of his architectural practice in 1820, indicated the bed in his plan of the state bedroom added to the Principal Floor. The bed's architecture corresponded with the room's gabled bay-window in the antiquarian Elizabethan façade introduced on the West front; while its brass-inlay of palms and other motifs, after the French manner, celebrates the family's descent from Robert, son of Rahier, Lord of Bastardière-sur-Sèvre, who participated in the Norman conquest (see Généalogie de la Maison de Bastard, 1848).

A renowned member of Kitley at the time was its housekeeper named Hubbard, the subject of Sarah Martin's verses 'Old Mother Hubbard' written c. 1816.