George III (George Frederick William), King of Great Britain and Ireland

b. 1738; d. 1820

The son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and grandson of George II.

After his father's death he was educated chiefly under the care of the Dowager Princess of Wales and the Earl of Bute. He was not an intelligent child: he was 11 years old before he learned to read and from an early age demonstrated that blend of obstinate determination, naivety, and sense of personal inadequacy which was to characterise his handling of political affairs. In 1760 he succeeded his grandfather and in 1761 married Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Their home life was remarkable for its staid respectability, as such setting a new pattern for the private life of the royal family. No doubt as a reaction from this, George's sons grew up as outrageous and embarrassing creatures whose conduct may well have contributed to their father's mental instability.

The first decade of George's reign was unsettled as he struggled to extend his personal influence on affairs, to prove his determination to 'be a king' as his mother is said to have urged. George disliked Pitt and Newcastle and they were pushed into resignation. Bute, George's favourite, was made secretary of state in 1761, but resigned immediately after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to be succeeded in turn by Grenville and Rockingham.

In the war with America (1776-83), there is little doubt that George both directed national policy and reflected national feeling. George was quite honestly unable to see anything unconstitutional in his attitude to the American colonists and the nation was as stubborn as he was. The disasters of the war failed to move him and even when faced with a coalition of France, Spain, and America, he was the last to give way to the opening of negotiations for peace. Later he was able to declare that he had fought the American colonists because he believed they were in the wrong - and tactical and political considerations could not shake his belief in his cause.

The Peace of Versailles (1783) gave America its independence and better terms than at one time seemed possible, thanks to Rodney's victories and French and Spanish reverses. Nevertheless the war marked a low point in Britain's prestige, for which George was largely responsible. From this point, although the King continued to interfere in government, his influence waned. Rockingham died in 1783, to be succeeded for a brief period by Shelburne whose ministry was overthrown by the Fox-North coalition. This fell when its India Bill was rejected by the Lords and the King sent for Pitt. Two months later Pitt won a decisive majority in a general election and his long tenure in office marked a considerable growth in the independence of the Cabinet and of the prime minister which was to become an established fact of the British 'constitution'. Even when, in 1801, Pitt resigned over the King's refusal to conciliate the Roman Catholics, his unwillingness to oppose the King was probably due to fears for the King's sanity rather than to any concessions to the King's view of his powers.

In 1788 George's mental instability, which had been increasing for some time, became acute. He recovered the following year but withdrew increasingly into private life, his hold on sanity ever more feeble. Nevertheless he was at this period more popular with his people than ever before. In the age of the French Revolution and the war of 1793 he was a symbol of British order and stability. In 1810 the death of his youngest daughter, Amelia, brought on his final attack of madness and his son 'Prinny' was regent until the old King's death in 1820.

The reign of George III was one of the longest in British history. It saw the country transformed by the rapidly advancing industrial revolution, its population almost doubled. It saw the loss of the first British Empire with the formation of the United States of America, and the beginnings of the second, with Britain gaining ever stronger hold on Canada, India, South Africa, and Australia. It was an age of great men, of Pitt, Burke, and Castlereagh, Nelson and Wellington, Reynolds and Gainsborough, Shelley, Wordsworth and Jane Austen.

George, the king, was not a great man. He can only be said to have suffered his long reign with considerable courage, the final irony being popularity when he was too old and too mad to appreciate it.

© JM Dent/Historybookshop.com

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