George III

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George III

GEORGE III. (1738–1820). King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and elector of Hanover. George was born the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Augusta of Saxe Gotha, in the Duke of Norfolk's house in St. James's Square, London, on 24 May 1738. Baptised George William Frederick, he was far from being the backward unbalanced child of legend. Although shy and of only average intellect, he could read and write English and German at eight, and in later life was drawn to astronomy, clocks, chess, drawing and painting, art and book collecting and—above all—music. Although he travelled little and read fewer books than he collected, he could hold a cultivated conversation with the likes of Dr. Johnson and the astronomer William Herschel. Early tendencies to melancholy and anxiety stayed with him, but although he was plagued by porphyria—a genetically inherited physical malady—as early as 1762, there was nothing wrong with his mind. The young king was an idealist with an almost unbearable sense of duty, borne up by a narrow but deep religious faith and a desire to see the rule of virtue. His misfortune was that no one had taught him to deal with the realities of the political world.

EARLY YEARS

George's alleged early slowness may have had more to do with a shy disposition and uninspiring tutors than with any intellectual inadequacies. From 1756, when he was given his own establishment, his tutor and close adviser was John Stuart, Earl of Bute, with whom he formed a close, at times pathetically dependent, relationship. Bute, as scores of George's marked essays testify, worked the adolescent prince hard and his rebukes cut deep. Indeed, Bute's school-masterly comments on his pupil's diligence were excessive, distressing, and—for later historians—misleading. While his influence tended to reinforce George's leanings to priggish puritanism, suspicion, and histrionics, Bute also inculcated a sense of patriotism and duty. George became the first Hanoverian to publicly "glory in the name of Briton."

There is no substance in the old accusation that Bute, whose politics were theoretical rather than practical, led George towards autocracy and the subversion of the constitution. On the contrary, both George and Bute saw the monarch as the proper defender of the constitution as established after 1688: a partnership between parliament's law making and fiscal powers and the king's rights to choose ministers and (when absolutely necessary) veto legislation. They were particularly anxious to guard against a possible coup by George's uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Both, like George's late father Frederick, despised "party" (that is, political partisanship) not because they wished to undermine parliament but because—like many others—they disapproved of self-interested factionalism. George, with the extremism of idealistic youth, moved from this position to contempt for all politicians except for Bute. To him, the Duke of Newcastle (Thomas Pelham-Holles), William Pitt (the elder), Henry Fox, and their cronies were all obnoxious. Unfortunately for George, this phase in his development coincided with the moment when, as the new king, he was forced to work with these very villains.

PRE-WAR MINISTRIES: BUTE TO GRAFTON

George succeeded his grandfather, George II, on 25 October 1760. Bute at once assumed the office of secretary of state for the north, replacing Robert Darcy, the Earl of Holdernesse, in this position. The young king saw that this protected Bute against talk that he was a court favorite who gave ministerial advice in secret. George's immediate aim was not to create a party of "king's friends" but to encourage consensus by offering household posts to opposition Tories. Ironically, far from eliminating partisanship, the policy contributed to the political instability in the 1760s.

While royal patronage could be, and was, deployed to cement majorities and influence elections, eighteenth century political parties were kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting alliances of personal followings and interest groups. George's determination to have Bute as his prime minister contributed further to the uncertainty. Finally, the king's wish to end the Seven Years' War, and especially to withdraw from the German conflict, put him at odds with Pitt, then secretary of state for the south, and Newcastle, the prime minister. He was not sorry when Pitt fell in October 1761 after his cabinet colleagues refused to countenance a pre-emptive strike against Spain. However, it was not until July 1762 that he was rid of Newcastle and able to appoint Bute.

Although from this point on ministries rose and fell with bewildering rapidity, George behaved with impeccable constitutional propriety. In 1763 he had to reluctantly accept Bute's resignation and accept George Grenville, who could command a parliamentary majority. There was no disagreement on policy. He agreed with Grenville that John Wilkes had to be punished for attacking the king and his court in print, and accepted the new prime minister's insistence that the colonies must be taxed in order to spread the financial burden of the war and of keeping a garrison in North America. Nevertheless, Grenville's tediousness and his tendency to harangue the king at length, not to mention his hostility to Bute, soon made him unbearable.

When Charles Watson Wentworth, the Earl of Rockingham, succeeded Grenville, and ran into severe opposition to repeal the Stamp Act, George gave the repeal bill his personal backing, incidentally demonstrating his willingness to compromise on colonial questions. When William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, succeeded Rockingham as prime minister, George overcame his earlier distaste for the man and gave the new administration his unstinting support. (At this time, Bute had withdrawn from public life.) Even when it became apparent that Chatham's body and mind were giving way, George continued to encourage him to stay on in office. It was Chatham himself who finally insisted on resigning. This left George with the stop-gap ministry of Augustus Henry Fitzroy, the third Earl of Grafton, which was brought down, not by the king, but by Chatham's unexpected attack on Grafton in the House of Lords in January 1770. Only then, almost in desperation, did George turn to the only politician capable of keeping a parliamentary majority together: Lord Frederick North. At no point was there any possibility of the king imposing a ministry upon an unwilling Parliament, nor did George III think in such terms.

LORD NORTH'S PRIME MINISTRY

Just as the instability of the 1760s had nothing to do with George's supposed autocratic tendencies, so the longevity of Lord North's ministry did not derive from the prime minister's supposed subservience to the king. If anything, the relationship was the other way about: having at last found a minister who could deliver stable majorities in parliament, George was very glad to follow North's lead. At first North led him, not to confrontation but to conciliation, by persuading his parliamentary followers to accept the withdrawal of all the Townshend duties except that on tea. George had as little interest in America as most of his subjects, so the idea that he wanted to exploit the American tax issue to build a popular following at home is as mythical as Rockingham's and Fox's allegations that he was secretly subverting both British and colonial liberties.

The turning point in George III's reign, with regard to the American colony, was the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Almost every serious politician, Chatham and Rockingham included, was outraged by this act of rebellion. Most concluded that the Americans would never be satisfied by concessions and must be brought firmly into line. George approved the Coercive Acts not as an enemy of liberty, but as the defender of the existing constitution: and in particular, of parliament's lawful supremacy over colonial assemblies. Indeed, he had very little choice. To do otherwise would have been both improper constitutionally and tantamount to giving his support to rebels. No eighteenth century sovereign could have done that.

Once hostilities began, George took little part in directing the conduct of the war. His principal contribution was to encourage his ministers to carry on—especially Lord North, who was thrown into acute depression by the disastrous battle at Saratoga and wanted to resign his office. While the king's opposition in Parliament was tiny, it was vociferous, and North's gifts for conciliation and parliamentary management were invaluable, so the king refused to let him go. Instead, George paid off North's debts in 1777 and for years monitored his state of mind through a correspondence with Charles Jenkinson and John Robinson. When all else failed, George used emotional blackmail, accusing North of wanting to desert him in his hour of need. The king was also concerned with the raising of troops, the building of warships, and the rewarding of successful commanders. Throughout this period George's aims were in tune with the majority of his members of Parliament and peers in the House of Lords and, after French entry into the war (on the American side) in 1778, with a significant share of popular opinion as well.

WAR AND THE POST-WAR PERIOD

George III's insistence on victory, and his long resistance to the idea of American independence, did not significantly prolong the war. It is true that Rockingham's early commitment to independence made it impossible to include him in the ministry in 1780. His terms included full powers to negotiate peace with the Americans, laws limiting the power of the executive, and the sacking of the Lord North's entire cabinet. This not only offended George's determination to fight to the finish, it also challenged his prerogative to choose ministers. Moreover, the Rockingham Whigs by themselves did not have a majority in the House of Commons, or anything like it. George was therefore under no sort of obligation, constitutional or political, to accept their demands. At that stage, victory in America was still attainable, and even after Yorktown it was still a military, as opposed to a political, possibility.

Only at the end of 1781 did George's views part company with what most others saw as reality. He held onto Lord North as prime minister for as long as possible, but was obliged to let him resign when, on 15 March 1782, the ministry barely survived a vote of no confidence. George then seriously contemplated abdication and retirement to Hanover. In the end, however, he behaved as a constitutional monarch, accepting Rockingham as prime minister and William Fitzmaurice-Petty, Earl of Shelburne, and Charles James Fox as a secretaries of state, and acquiesced to their insistence on American independence.

Having once accepted it, however, he never looked back. When Shelburne fell from power, George accepted the a coalition headed by Fox and Lord North, despite his deep personal aversion to Fox, and allowed it to ratify the peace terms it had just censured in opposition. In 1785 he welcomed the former arch-rebel John Adams as America's ambassador to Britain:

I will be free with you, I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.

With the peace treaties secure, George used the occasion of Fox's India Bill to get rid of the coalition and bring in William Pitt the younger as prime minister in December 1783. The king's partnership with Pitt lasted with only one short break until the latter's premature death on 23 January 1806.

In 1788 George suffered his first serious public bout of the porphyria that had been plaguing him since at least 1762. This is a peculiarly nasty disease, in which low hemoglobin production causes porphyrins to enter the blood stream and attack the nervous system. The physical effects are bad enough, but at the stage it had now reached in George, it causes delirium, loss of self-control, and hallucinations. In other words, it looked like madness. A specialist, complete with straight-jacket and restraining chair, was called in to treat the king. Although the king recovered, the attacks became increasingly frequent, severe, and distressing.

By 1801 the king's previously happy marriage was breaking apart as the queen became terrified of his periodic violence and obscene language. He became thinner, exhausted, less able to cope with crises, and his eyesight began to fail. By the end of 1810 he was permanently incapacitated and in January 1811 Parliament allowed his son to take over his kingly role as prince regent. The last decade of George's life was spent in an imaginary world of the past, as he slowly lost his eyesight altogether and his hearing declined. He died at Windsor on 29 January 1820.

George III was a highly moral man, whose personal life was beyond reproach. An able politician after overcoming the acute learning curve of the early 1760s, he never aspired to be more than a strictly constitutional monarch and had a painfully acute awareness of his constitutional duty. Sometimes that sense of duty was unimaginative, narrow. or even wrongheaded. For example, the reverberations of his refusal to countenance Catholic emancipation because, in his view, it violated his coronation oath, reverberates in Ireland even today. His abhorrence of French republicanism was dogmatic and his patriotism could be chauvinistic. Yet his very prejudices were shared by most of his countrymen, and his uprightness and respectability, combined with homely interests such as farming, made the monarchy a popular symbol of the nation. In a sense, it was his model of monarchy that was picked up by Queen Victoria and was further developed by her twentieth century successors.

SEE ALSO Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts; Stamp Act.