June 04, 2011 <Back to Index>
PAGE SPONSOR |
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820 [N.S.]) wasKing of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two predecessors he was born in Britain and spoke English as his first language. Despite his long life, he never visited Hanover. George
III's long reign was marked by a series of military conflicts involving
his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in
Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain
defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence, which led to the establishment of the United States of America. A series of wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France,
over a 20-year period, finally concluded in the defeat of Napoleon in
1815. In the later part of his life, George III suffered from recurrent
and, eventually, permanent mental illness.
Medical practitioners were baffled by this at the time, although it has
since been suggested that he suffered from the blood disease porphyria. After a final relapse in 1810, a regency was established, and George III's eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent.
On George III's death, the Prince Regent succeeded his father as George
IV. Historical analysis of George III's life has gone through a
"kaleidoscope of changing views" which have depended heavily on the
prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them. George was born in London at Norfolk House. He was the grandson of King George II, and the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As Prince George was born two months premature and was thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James's and the Bishop of Oxford. One month later, he was publicly baptised at Norfolk House, again by Secker. His godparents were the King of Sweden (for whom Lord Baltimore stood proxy), his uncle the Duke of Saxe-Gotha (for whom Lord Carnarvon stood proxy) and his great-aunt the Queen of Prussia (for whom Lady Charlotte Edwin stood proxy). George grew into a healthy, but reserved and shy, child. The family moved to Leicester Square, where George and his younger brother Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany,
were educated together by private tutors. Family letters show that he
could read and write in both English and German, as well as comment on
political events of the time, by the age of eight. He
was the first British monarch to study science systematically. Apart
from chemistry and physics, his lessons included astronomy,
mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce,
agriculture and constitutional law, along with sporting and social
accomplishments such as dancing, fencing, and riding. His religious
education was wholly Anglican. George's
grandfather, King George II, disliked the Prince of Wales and took
little interest in his grandchildren. However, in 1751 the Prince of
Wales died unexpectedly from a lung injury, and George became heir apparent to the throne. He inherited one of his father's titles and became the Duke of Edinburgh. Now more interested in his grandson, three weeks later the King created George Prince of Wales. (The title is not automatically acquired.) In the spring of 1756, as George approached his eighteenth birthday, the King offered him a grand establishment at St James's Palace, but George refused the offer, guided by his mother and her confidante, Lord Bute, who would later serve as Prime Minister. George's mother, now the Dowager Princess of Wales, preferred to keep George at home where she could imbue him with her strict moral values. In 1759, George was smitten with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond,
but Lord Bute advised against the match and George abandoned his
thoughts of marriage. "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great
nation," he wrote, "and consequently must often act contrary to my
passions." Nevertheless, attempts by the King to marry George to Princess Sophia Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel were resisted by him and his mother; Sophia married the Margrave of Bayreuth instead. The
following year, George succeeded to the Crown when his grandfather,
George II, died suddenly on 25 October 1760, two weeks before his 77th
birthday. The search for a suitable wife intensified. On 8 September
1761, the King married in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, Duchess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he met on their wedding day. A fortnight later, both were crowned at Westminster Abbey.
George remarkably never took a mistress (in contrast with his
grandfather and his sons), and the couple enjoyed a genuinely happy
marriage. They had 15 children — nine sons and six daughters. In 1762, George purchased Buckingham House (on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace) for use as a family retreat. His other residences were Kew and Windsor Castle.
St. James's Palace was retained for official use. He did not travel
extensively, and spent his entire life in southern England. In the
1790s, annual holidays were taken at Weymouth, Dorset, which he popularised as one of the first seaside resorts in England.
Although George's accession was at first welcomed by politicians of all parties, the first years of George's reign were marked by political instability, largely generated as a result of disagreements over the Seven Years' War. George was perceived as favouring Tory ministers, which led to his denunciation by the Whigs as an autocrat. On George's accession, the Crown lands produced relatively little income; most revenue was generated through taxes and excise duties. George surrendered the Crown Estate to Parliamentary control in return for a Civil List annuity for the support of his household and the expenses of Civil Government. Claims that George used the income to reward supporters with bribes and gifts are disputed by historians who say such claims "rest on nothing but falsehoods put out by disgruntled opposition". Debts
amounting to over £3 million over the course of George's reign
were paid by Parliament, and the Civil List annuity was increased from
time to time. George aided the Royal Academy with large grants from his private funds, and may have donated more than half of his personal income to charity. Of George's art collection, the two most notable purchases are Vermeer's Lady at the Virginals and a set of Canalettos, but it is as a collector of books that he is best remembered. The King's Library was open and available to scholars and was the foundation of a new national library. In May 1762, the incumbent Whig ministry of the Duke of Newcastle was replaced with one led by the Scottish Tory Lord Bute.
Bute's opponents worked against him by spreading the calumny that he
was having an affair with the King's mother, and by exploiting
anti-Scottish prejudices amongst the English. John Wilkes, a Member of Parliament, published The North Briton, which was both inflammatory and defamatory in its condemnation of Bute and the government. Wilkes was eventually arrested for seditious libel but he fled to France to escape punishment; he was expelled from the House of Commons, and found guilty in absentia of blasphemy and libel. In 1763, after concluding the Peace of Paris which ended the war, Lord Bute resigned, allowing the Whigs under George Grenville to return to power. Later that year, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 placed
a boundary upon the westward expansion of the American colonies. The
Proclamation aimed to force colonists to negotiate with the Native
Americans, and therefore to reduce the costly frontier warfare that had
erupted over land conflicts. While the Proclamation Line, as it came to
be known, did not bother the majority of settled farmers, it was
unpopular with a vocal minority of Americans and ultimately contributed
to conflict between the colonists and the British government. With
the American colonists generally unburdened by British taxes, the
government found it increasingly difficult to pay for the defence of
the colonies against native uprisings and the possibility of French
incursions. In 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Act, which levied a stamp duty on
every document in the British colonies in North America. Since
newspapers were printed on stamped paper, those most affected by the
introduction of the duty were the most effective at producing
propaganda opposing the tax. Meanwhile, the King had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the
King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of Prime Minister. After a brief illness, which may have presaged his illnesses to come, George settled on Lord Rockingham to form a ministry, and dismissed Grenville.
Lord
Rockingham, with the support of Pitt and the King, repealed Grenville's
unpopular Stamp Act, but his government was weak and he was replaced in
1766 by Pitt, whom George created Earl of Chatham.
The actions of Lord Chatham and George III in repealing the Act were so
popular in America that statues of them both were erected in New York City. Lord Chatham fell ill in 1767, and the Duke of Grafton took
over the government, although he did not formally become Prime Minister
until 1768. That year, John Wilkes returned to England, stood as a
candidate in the general election, and came top of the poll in the Middlesex constituency.
His election sparked riots in London, largely the result of economic
distress, and Wilkes was again expelled from Parliament. Wilkes was
re-elected and expelled twice more, before the House of Commons
resolved that his candidature was invalid and declared the runner-up as the victor. Grafton's government disintegrated in 1770, allowing the Tories led by Lord North to return to power. George was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, but his piety was not shared by his brothers. George was appalled by what he saw as their loose morals. In 1770, his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, was exposed as an adulterer, and the following year Cumberland married a young widow, Anne Horton.
The King considered her inappropriate as a royal bride: she was from a
lower social class and German law barred any children of the couple
from the Hanoverian succession. George insisted on a new law that
essentially forbade members of the Royal Family from legally marrying
without the consent of the Sovereign. The subsequent bill was unpopular
in Parliament, including among George's own ministers, but passed as the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Shortly afterward, another of George's brothers, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, revealed he had been secretly married to Maria, Countess Waldegrave, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole.
The news confirmed George's opinion that he had been right to introduce
the law: Maria was related to his political opponents. Neither lady was
ever received at court. Lord
North's government was chiefly concerned with discontent in America. To
assuage American opinion most of the custom duties were withdrawn,
except for the tea duty, which in George's words was "one tax to keep
up the right [to levy taxes]". In 1773, the tea ships moored in Boston Harbor were boarded by colonists and the tea thrown overboard, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.
In Britain, opinion hardened against the colonists, with Chatham now
agreeing with North that the destruction of the tea was "certainly criminal". With the clear support of Parliament Lord North introduced measures, which were called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists: the Port of Boston was shut down and the constitution of Massachusetts was altered so that the upper house of the legislature was appointed by the Crown instead of elected by the lower house. Up
to this point, in the words of Professor Peter Thomas, George's "hopes
were centred on a political solution, and he always bowed to his
cabinet's opinions even when sceptical of their success. The detailed
evidence of the years from 1763 to 1775 tends to exonerate George III
from any real responsibility for the American Revolution." Though
the Americans characterised George as a tyrant, in these years he acted
as a constitutional monarch supporting the initiatives of his ministers. The American War of Independence began when armed conflict between British regulars and colonial militiamen broke out in New England in April 1775. After a year of fighting, the colonies declared their independence from
the Crown as "free and independent States" in July 1776, and listed
grievances against the British King, legislature, and populace. Among
George's other offences, the Declaration charged, "He has abdicated
Government here ... He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts,
burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The gilded
equestrian statue of George III in New York was pulled down. The
British captured the city in 1776, but the grand strategic plan of
invading from Canada failed with the surrender of the British
Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga. George
III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war
with the revolutionaries in America, despite the opinions of his own
ministers. In the words of the Victorian author George Trevelyan,
the King was determined "never to acknowledge the independence of the
Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation
of a war which promised to be eternal." The King wanted to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the
day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse". However,
more recent historians defend George by saying in the context of the
times no king would willingly surrender the bulk of his dominions, and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporary monarchs in Europe. After
Saratoga, both Parliament and the British people were in favour of the
war; recruitment ran at high levels and although political opponents
were vocal, they remained a small minority. With the setbacks in America, Lord North asked to transfer power to Lord Chatham,
whom he thought more capable, but George refused to do so; he suggested
instead that Chatham serve as a subordinate minister in Lord North's
administration, but Chatham refused to cooperate. He died later in the
same year. In 1778, France (Britain's chief rival) signed a treaty of friendship with
the newly independent American States. Great Britain was then at war
with France, and in 1779 it was also at war with Spain. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both
resigned from the government. Lord North again requested that he also
be allowed to resign, but he stayed in office at George III's
insistence. Opposition to the costly war was increasing, and in June 1780 contributed to disturbances in London known as the Gordon riots. In 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the Siege of Yorktown reached
London; Lord North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned
the following year. The King drafted an abdication notice, which was
never delivered, finally accepted the defeat in North America, and authorised the negotiation of a peace. The Treaties of Paris, by which Britain recognised the independence of the American states and returned Florida to Spain, were ratified in 1783. When John Adams was appointed American Minister to Britain in
1785, George had become resigned to the new relationship between his
country and the States. He told Adams, "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 collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham
became Prime Minister for the second time, but died within months. The
King then appointed Lord Shelburne to replace him. Charles James Fox, however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of the Duke of Portland. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Lord Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the Fox-North Coalition. The Duke of Portland became Prime Minister, with Fox and Lord North, as Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary respectively. The
King disliked Fox intensely, both for his politics as well as his
character; he thought Fox was unprincipled and a bad influence on the
Prince of Wales. George
III was distressed at having to appoint ministers not of his liking,
but the Portland ministry quickly built up a majority in the House of
Commons, and could not be displaced easily. He was further dismayed
when the government introduced the India Bill, which proposed to reform
the government of India by transferring political power from the Honourable East India Company to Parliamentary commissioners. Although
the King actually favoured greater control over the Company, the
proposed commissioners were all political allies of Fox. Immediately after the House of Commons passed it, George authorised Lord Temple to inform the House of Lords that
he would regard any peer who voted for the bill as his enemy. The bill
was rejected by the Lords; three days later, the Portland ministry was
dismissed, and William Pitt the Younger was
appointed Prime Minister, with Temple as his Secretary of State. On 17
December 1783, Parliament voted in favour of a motion condemning the
influence of the monarch in parliamentary voting as a "high crime" and
Temple was forced to resign. Temple's departure destabilised the
government, and three months later the government lost its majority and
Parliament was dissolved; the subsequent election gave Pitt a firm mandate. For
George III, Pitt's appointment was a great victory. It proved that he
was able to appoint Prime Ministers on the basis of his own
interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice
of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's
ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created
new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords. During and after Pitt's ministry, George III was extremely popular in Britain. The British people admired him for his piety, and for remaining faithful to his wife. He was fond of his children, and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy in 1782 and 1783 respectively. Nevertheless,
he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend
rigorous lessons from seven in the morning, and to lead lives of
religious observance and virtue. When
his children strayed from George's own principles of righteousness, as
his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed. However,
by this time George's health was deteriorating. He suffered from a
mental illness, which was possibly a symptom of the genetic disease, porphyria, although this has been questioned. A study of samples of the King's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of arsenic,
a possible trigger for the disease. The source of the arsenic is not
known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics. The
King may have suffered a brief episode of disease in 1765, but a longer
episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary
session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to
recuperate. It was the furthest he had ever been from London — just short
of 100 miles (150 km) — but his condition worsened. In November
he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without
pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and making his voice hoarse. With
his doctors largely at a loss to explain his illness, spurious stories
about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with
a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia. Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards, and the King's doctors, who included Francis Willis, treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic poultices to draw out "evil humours".
In
the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of the
regency. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for George
III's eldest son and heir apparent,
the Prince of Wales, to act as Regent, to Pitt’s consternation Fox
suggested that it was the Prince of Wales's absolute right to act on
his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be
removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that
it was for Parliament to nominate a Regent, and wanted to restrict the
Regent's authority. In February 1789, the Regency Bill, authorising the Prince of Wales to act
as Prince Regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons,
but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George III recovered. After George’s recovery, his popularity, and that of Pitt, continued to increase at the expense of Fox and the Prince of Wales. His humane and understanding treatment of two insane assailants, Margaret Nicholson in 1786 and John Frith in 1790, contributed to his popularity. A failed attempt to assassinate the King on 15 May 1800 was not political in origin but motivated by the delusions of James Hadfield, who shot at the King in the Drury Lane Theatre. George seemed unperturbed by the incident, so much so that he fell asleep in the interval. The French Revolution of 1789, in which the French monarchy had
been overthrown, worried many British landowners. France declared war
on Great Britain in 1793; in the war attempt, George allowed Pitt to
increase taxes, raise armies, and suspend the right of habeas corpus. The First Coalition to
oppose revolutionary France, which included Austria, Prussia, and
Spain, broke up in 1795 when Prussia and Spain made separate peace with
France. The Second Coalition, which included Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in 1800. Only Great Britain was left fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic. A
brief lull in hostilities allowed Pitt to concentrate effort on
Ireland, where there had been an uprising and attempted French landing
in 1798. The British and Irish Parliaments passed the Act of Union 1800,
which, on 1 January 1801, united Great Britain and Ireland into a
single nation, known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland. George used the opportunity to drop the claim to the Throne of France, which English and British Sovereigns had maintained since the reign of Edward III. It was suggested that George adopt the title "Emperor of the British Isles", but he refused. As part of his Irish policy, Pitt planned to remove certain legal disabilities that applied to Roman Catholics.
George III claimed that to emancipate Catholics would be to violate his
coronation oath, in which Sovereigns promise to maintain Protestantism. Faced with opposition to his religious reform policies from both the King and the British public, Pitt threatened to resign. At
about the same time, the King suffered a relapse of his previous
illness, which he blamed on worry over the Catholic question. On 14 March 1801, Pitt was formally replaced by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Henry Addington. Addington opposed emancipation, instituted annual accounts, abolished
income tax and began a programme of disarmament. In October 1801, he
made peace with the French, and in 1802 signed the Treaty of Amiens.
George did not consider the peace with France as real; in his view it was an "experiment". In
1803, the war resumed but public opinion distrusted Addington to lead
the nation in war, and instead favoured Pitt. An invasion of England by
Napoleon seemed imminent and a massive volunteer movement arose to
defend England against the French. George's review of 27,000 volunteers
in Hyde Park, London, on 26 and 28 October 1803 and at the height of the invasion scare, attracted an estimated 500,000 spectators on each day. The Times said, "The enthusiasm of the multitude was beyond all expression." A
courtier wrote on 13 November that, "The King is really prepared to
take the field in case of attack, his beds are ready and he can move at
half an hour's warning". George wrote to his friend Bishop Hurd, "We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his
threatened invasion ... Should his troops effect a landing, I
shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and my other armed
subjects, to repel them." After Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of invasion was extinguished.
In
1804, George was again affected by his recurrent illness; after his
recovery, Addington resigned and Pitt regained power. Pitt sought to appoint Fox to his ministry, but George III refused. Lord Grenville perceived an injustice to Fox, and refused to join the new ministry. Pitt concentrated on forming a coalition with Austria, Russia, and Sweden. This Third Coalition,
however, met the same fate as the First and Second Coalitions,
collapsing in 1805. The setbacks in Europe took a toll on Pitt's health
and he died in 1806, reopening the question of who should serve in the
ministry. Lord Grenville became Prime Minister, and his "Ministry of All the Talents"
included Fox. The King was conciliatory towards Fox, after being forced
to capitulate over his appointment. After Fox's death in September
1806, the King and ministry were in open conflict. To boost
recruitment, the ministry proposed a measure in February 1807 whereby
Roman Catholics would be allowed to serve in all ranks of the Armed
Forces. George instructed them not only to drop the measure, but also
to agree never to set up such a measure again. The ministers agreed to
drop the measure then pending, but refused to bind themselves in the future. They were dismissed and replaced by the Duke of Portland as the nominal Prime Minister, with actual power being held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Spencer Perceval. Parliament was dissolved, and the subsequent election gave
the ministry a strong majority in the House of Commons. George III made
no further major political decisions during his reign; the replacement
of the Duke of Portland by Perceval in 1809 was of little actual
significance. In late 1810, at the height of his popularity but
already virtually blind with cataracts and in pain from rheumatism,
George III became dangerously ill. In his view the malady had been
triggered by the stress he suffered at the death of his youngest and
favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. The Princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of distress and crying every day ... were melancholy beyond description." He accepted the need for the Regency Act 1811, and
the Prince of Wales acted as Regent for the remainder of George III's
life. By the end of 1811, George III had become permanently insane and
lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death. Perceval was assassinated in 1812 (the only British Prime Minister to have suffered such a fate) and was replaced by Lord Liverpool. Liverpool oversaw British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The subsequent Congress of Vienna led to significant territorial gains for Hanover, which was upgraded from an electorate to a kingdom. Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He suffered from dementia and
became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was incapable of
knowing or understanding either that he was declared King of Hanover in
1814, or the death of his wife in 1818. Over
Christmas 1819, he rambled incoherently for 58 hours, and for the last
few weeks of his life was unable to walk. On 29 January 1820, he died at Windsor Castle, six days after the death of his fourth son, the Duke of Kent. His favourite son, Frederick, Duke of York, was with him. George III was buried on 16 February in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. George was succeeded by two of his sons George IV and William IV, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to their niece, Victoria, the last monarch of the House of Hanover and the only legitimate child of the Duke of Kent. George
III lived for 81 years and 239 days and reigned for 59 years and 96
days: both his life and his reign were longer than those of any of his
predecessors. Only George's granddaughter Queen Victoria exceeded his record, though Elizabeth II has lived longer. George
III was dubbed "Farmer George" by satirists, at first mocking his
interest in mundane matters rather than politics but later to contrast
his homely thrift with his son's grandiosity and to portray him as a
man of the people. Under George III, who was passionately interested in agriculture, the British Agricultural Revolution reached
its peak and great advances were made in fields such as science and
industry. There was unprecedented growth in the rural population, which
in turn provided much of the workforce for the concurrent Industrial Revolution. George's collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now housed in the Science Museum (London); he funded the construction and maintenance of William Herschel's forty-foot telescope, which was the biggest ever built at the time. Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, which he at first named after George, in 1781. George
III himself hoped that "the tongue of malice may not paint my
intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve", but
in the popular mind George III has been both demonised and praised.
While very popular at the start of his reign, by the mid 1770s George
had lost the loyalty of revolutionary American colonists, though about half of the colonists remained loyal. The grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence were
presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he had committed
to establish an "absolute Tyranny" over the colonies. The Declaration's
wording has contributed to the American public's perception of George
as a tyrant. Contemporary accounts of George III's life fall into two
camps: one demonstrating "attitudes dominant in the latter part of the
reign, when the King had become a revered symbol of national resistance
to French ideas and French power" and the other "derived their views of
the King from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of
the reign, and they expressed in their works the views of the
opposition". Building on the latter of these two assessments, British historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Trevelyan and Erskine May, promoted hostile interpretations of George III's life. However, in the mid twentieth century the work of Lewis Namier, who thought George was "much maligned", kick-started a re-evaluation of the man and his reign. Scholars of the later twentieth century, such as Butterfield and
Pares, and Macalpine and Hunter, are inclined to treat George
sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and illness.
Butterfield rejected the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with
withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in
which an historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance.
His capacity for synthesis, and his ability to dovetail the various
parts of the evidence … carried him into a more profound and
complicated elaboration of error than some of his more pedestrian
predecessors … he inserted a doctrinal element into his history
which, granted his original aberrations, was calculated to project the
lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or
truth." In
pursuing war with the American colonists, George III believed he was
defending the right of an elected Parliament to levy taxes, not seeking
to expand his own power or prerogatives. Today,
scholars perceive the long reign of George III as a continuation of the
reduction in the political power of monarchy, and its growth as the
embodiment of national morality. |