Monarchy

George III

George III was only 22 when his grandfather George II died on 25 October 1760. The new king had been a late developer. Sulky, idle and apparently thought rather dim at first, he had been transformed in his late teens by a sympathetic mentor into a paragon of hard work and self-discipline. A competent draughtsman, he was intensely musical, fluent in French and German and read voraciously.

He was a late developer sexually, too. But following his marriage, 11 months after his accession, to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, he made up for lost time by fathering no fewer than 15 children. However, unlike virtually all his predecessors, he never took a mistress.

He was aware, unlike Georges I and II, that he was English through and through by birth and by inclination. He was also determined to fulfil what he saw as his duty to be a patriotic British king. Perhaps, he was too determined and demanding – both of others and, critically, of himself.

His clash with the great war prime minister William Pitt the Elder, who saw himself as having something of a monopoly on patriotism, came within hours of his accession. In a speech given on the day of his grandfather's death, George referred to the 'bloody war' – the Seven Years' War – in which Britain was engaged. At Pitt's outraged insistence, this was toned down in the published version to 'expensive but just and necessary war'. Within the year, however, Pitt had resigned and, in 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed, bringing the war to a triumphant conclusion.

As the American colonies increasingly struggled against rule by Britain, George perversely saw himself as a sovereign of free and independent peoples who held an empire together. This concept was both ingenious and far-sighted – and, as Britain's 20th-century imperial policy evolved, became the foundation of the Commonwealth – but in the 18th century, it was impossible. Parliament and prime ministers like Pitt had only just got some control over the monarchy. To allow George III to become king of the American colonies would have given the crown a new and expanded power base that might, once again, allow the old monarchy to challenge the new.

Nor, to be fair, did George want to go that far, for he was much too loyal to the parliamentary settlement that had brought the Hanoverians to the throne. Instead, he threw his weight behind Parliament's determination to impose its will on the rebellious colonies.

On 12 February 1765, the House of Commons were presented with a Bill intended to tap American wealth by imposing stamp duty on property transactions in the North American colonies. It was nodded through an almost empty chamber with minimal opposition.

However, the Stamp Act set America alight. The British Parliament was not the only one in the British empire – in America, there were 13 such assemblies that considered themselves its equal. Resolutions and protests against the Act came thick and fast from these legislatures. Wholly unprepared for this reaction, the Westminster Parliament repealed it, but at the same time tried to preserve the principle of parliamentary sovereignty by declaring that Westminster was competent to pass laws for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'.

If Parliament had continued to be led by someone like Pitt (who left power in 1767), there is little doubt that it would have succeeded in finding a modus operandi with the colonies. But faced with a number of weak prime ministers, the king himself increasingly emerged as the figurehead of the struggle. The result was indecision and disarray.

Finally, goaded beyond endurance by the 'sons of Liberty', as the American resistance called themselves, the British government took a hard line, closing the port of Boston and remodelling the Massachusetts assembly. Troops – including German regiments personally raised by the king – were despatched, and in April 1775, the first armed clash took place at Lexington, near Boston. The colonials acquitted themselves surprisingly well against seasoned professional troops.

The Americans took this as a declaration of war, and a month later the Continental Congress convened in the State House in Philadelphia, to organise military resistance. A year later, the Congress sat again and, on 4 July 1776, issued the Declaration of Independence, the preamble of which listed all of George III's 'Injuries and Usurpations'.

The end came in October 1781, when the British were trapped by the Americans and the French at Yorktown, Virginia, and the king's army, commanded by Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to George Washington. A year later, George III – faced with a Commons motion to make peace with Britain's rebellious American colonies and recognise their independence – resolved to abdicate and move to his electorate of Hanover in Germany. He was, however, dissuaded.

Following the defeat, there was a quick succession of prime ministers, and the king became upset at being forced to appoint ministers not to his liking. Immediately after the House of Commons passed the India Bill, George informed the Lords that he would regard any peer who voted for it as his enemy. On 17 December 1783, rather than risk social ostracism, the upper house duly rejected the bill, the government was dismissed and William Pitt the Younger was appointed prime minister.

For George, this was a great victory: he now thought that he had the power to choose any prime minister he wanted without the agreement of any political group. He enthusiastically supported Pitt, creating as many new peers as needed to give him a firm majority in the Lords. (One of George's successor's was not so willing to do this – see The humiliation of William IV.)

The king now began to struggle to keep his sanity. He had already had one bout of 'madness' in 1765, but had quickly recovered. In the summer of 1788, however, the illness – which most experts now think was the inherited condition porphyria – took hold in earnest, and George became a danger to himself and others. The question of who was to rule the country began to be of major importance. Through various legal chicaneries, a Bill appointing as regent George, prince of Wales, was passed in February 1789. But almost immediately the king made a miraculous recovery and, much to his son's disappointment, took control again.

In July, the French Revolution broke out. There was no comment from the usually voluble George III, but then he was still recovering from his illness at Kew Palace, outside London. By August, however, Queen Charlotte was reacting with a horrified sympathy to the mounting humiliation of the French royal family.

France furnishes … melancholy news. I often think that this cannot be the 18th century in which we live at present, for ancient history can hardly produce anything more barbarous and cruel than our neighbours in France.

As France descended into chaos, George III's popularity increased. Then on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI of France was guillotined. Few foreign events have ever provoked such horror in England. Audiences demanded that theatrical performances be abandoned, the whole House of Commons wore mourning and crowds surrounded George's coach crying 'War with France!'

The French seized the initiative: on 1 February, the new republic declared war on Britain. George, who symbolised British resistance, supported Pitt's programme of increased taxes, raising an army and suspending habeas corpus – all in support of the war.

In 1800, another Act of Union was passed, this time joining Ireland to Britain to create the United Kingdom. George took this opportunity to drop the English sovereign's claim to the throne of France, which had been asserted by all monarchs since the reign of Edward III. However, at the same time, he refused to remove various strictures that affected Catholics, saying that this would violate his coronation oath:

No, no, I had rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to any such measure. I can give up my crown and retire from power. I can quit my palace and live in a cottage. I can lay my head on a block and lose my life, but I cannot break my oath.

In the popular mind at least, George was now transforming himself from a meddlesome would-be absolutist into the benign father of his people: uxorious, moral, modest, frugal and the very embodiment of a modern monarch. The result was the astonishing popular success of his Golden Jubilee on 25 October 1809.

But that very day, George, who had already had two mysterious episodes of apparent mental illness, began his permanent and irreversible descent into a twilight world of blindness and deranged senility. In 1811, Parliament passed the Regency Act – using the same irregular legal precedents as in 1789 – and the prince of Wales became regent for the rest of his father's life.

For almost a decade, George III lived the life of a recluse at Windsor Castle, staying in a three-room apartment, spending hours thumping on an old harpsichord. But then his condition suddenly worsened and he died on 29 January 1820.

The Age of George III
www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/18chome.ht
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Extremely comprehensive website devoted to the politics of the third Georgian Age.

King George III: Mad or misunderstood
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/388990
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BBC News item on an analysis of a sample of George III's hair, which revealed that his porphyria may have been triggered by the massive amounts of arsenic he appears to have ingested.

Kew Palace
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 3AB
Information line: 0870 751 5179
Website: www.hrp.org.uk/KewPalace/
Once a rich merchant's house, Kew Palace was home to George III, Queen Charlotte and some of their daughters from 1801 to 1818, during the king's bouts of supposed 'madness'. It has been reopened to the public following a 10-year conservation project.

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