GEORGE III. (George William Frederick), king of Great Britain and Ireland, was born June 4 (New Style), 1738, the son of George II.'s eldest son Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of Augusta, a princess of Saxe-Gotha. Almost from birth he was introduced to the ungainly squabbles that divided his father and grandfather; and Dr. Ayscough, the tutor assigned to him at the age of six, was chiefly remarkable as an adherent of the opposition. When George was thirteen his absurd father died ; Ayscough was dismissed, and the unfortunate boy's education became a matter of acute political controversy, with the result that he had barely time to become accustomed to one set of instructors before they were changed for another. In later life the old king's recollection of his two successive governors was that Harcourt, though well intentioned, was wholly unfit for his job, while Waldegrave was a "depraved, worthless man"; and though he had a kindly remem brance of his second episcopal preceptor, Thomas of Peterborough, and of his sub-preceptor, Scott, he called Thomas's predecessor, Hayter of Norwich, an "intriguing, unworthy man, more fitted to be a Jesuit than an English bishop." Though his mother was devoted to him, she was a foolish, ignorant woman, who once remarked that logic was "an odd study" for children of her son's condition. Unfortunately, too, she kept him almost isolated from the world except for the remnants of the little Leicester House clique, such as Egmont and Bubb Dodington and the Earl of Bute, who used to encourage Frederick in his futile intrigues against George II. and his ministers. George is described in his youth as lethargic, an epithet which certainly cannot be applied to him when he became king; but a certain "vanity and obstinacy" and a tendency to let "his anger be turned into sulkiness" and to "behave like a child," which Lady Sarah Lennox noted as traits in his character, remained and are confirmed by his own admission to George Rose in 1804 that "his memory being a good one . . . what he did not forget he could not forgive," a point he illustrated by his grim declaration that he would not admit Fox to his councils, "even at the hazard of civil war." This reserved and authoritative disposition was much encouraged by the training he received at his mother's court, where Bolingbroke's "Patriot King" was laid down as the guide for his conception of royal duties; while the constantly whispered injunction of his mother, "George, be a king," in contrast to his grandfather's dependence on a Whig oligarchy, was allowed to sink into his mind.
His first actions on being called to the throne on the death of George II. (Oct. 25, 176o) showed his determination to "be a king." Dismissing Pitt, who had come to announce his accession, to await his pleasure, he consulted none of his ministers on the speech he addressed to the Council, but only Bute. Pitt had then been gloriously conducting the Seven Years' War since 1756, but there was as yet no prospect of peace. George III., however, had realized that, as long as Pitt, supported by the Whig oligarchy, was directing a successful war, it would be impossible for the king to obtain control over the machinery of government; accordingly from the outset he proclaimed his intention to bring to an end what he termed a "bloody and expensive war." On Pitt's vehement expostulations this phrase was toned down in the printed version to "expensive, but just and necessary war," and a promise made to consider the interests of the allies, notably Frederick the Great ; but the king's resolution was not thereby shaken. Bute was very soon substituted for Holderness, Pitt's docile fellow-secretary, and encouraged those members of the cabinet who were outraged by Pitt's supercilious method of treating them as nonentities but who till then had been too timid to combine against him. Thus the great minister's resignation was brought about when he failed to persuade his colleagues to declare war on Spain in 1761.
But the king's greatest stroke was in forcing Newcastle to resign a few months later ; for Newcastle was the arch-schemer of Whig majorities, powerful from his control over elections and over all the patronage necessary to keep electors and members of parliament contented. With the fall of Newcastle the king took into his own hands all the Treasury patronage, and showed that he meant to be master by turning out some of the greatest Whig lords from their offices in the household or from their lord lieutenancies in the counties. Negotiations for peace were energet ically pushed on by Bute, who succeeded Newcastle at the Treasury, and when the Preliminaries of Paris were ready for sub mission to parliament, a favourable majority was ensured by the ruthless determination of the king's agent, Henry Fox, who not only bribed existing members profusely, but secured future ma jorities in the constituencies by a further holocaust of great Whig office holders and by turning out the humblest official voters, such as tide-waiters and other Treasury satellites. At the end of Decem ber 1762 the king's victory was made patent to all by a majority of 319 for the Preliminaries, and the Princess of Wales was able to exclaim, "Now my son is king of England!" For the next twenty years of his reign he could summon or dismiss his ministries almost at pleasure.
But though George III. had thus early in his reign obtained con trol over the government, he had by no means succeeded in ob taining the affection of his people. In his first speech to parliament he had made a bid for this affection by his boast, "Born and bred in this country, I glory in the name of Briton," in pointed allu sion to the German upbringing of his two predecessors ; but unfortunately the appeal fell flat, largely owing to the use of the word Briton instead of English, at the presumed suggestion of Bute, whose unpopularity was enhanced by his Scottish national ity. Nor was his marriage in 1761 of a nature to awaken any romantic enthusiasm. In the early days of his reign he had been much attracted by the beauty and unconventional charm of Fox's niece, Lady Sarah Lennox, and had even made a clumsy attempt at a proposal of marriage to her; but the influence of his sur roundings, aghast at the prospect of his marriage with a subject, allied too to a powerful Whig clique, overcame his incipient pas sion, and he chose as his wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg, consoling Lady Sarah by assigning to her the post of bridesmaid. Queen Charlotte, though a lady of no special beauty or charm, made an excellent wife for the king, for both shared a taste for homely domesticity, which, though a subject of derision in court circles, eventually proved one of the chief sources of their people's affec tions. But for the time being any natural inclination to rejoice at the marriage was overshadowed by the king's partiality to the unpopular Scotsman, Bute, and by the dismissal of the national hero, Pitt, who, it was noted, was shortly afterwards greeted with frenzied enthusiasm in the City, while the king was received with marked coldness. This unpopularity was expressed with cold, al most malignant insolence by Wilkes in his famous No. 45 of the North Briton (April 23, 1763). The king felt himself insulted by comments on his speech to parliament, which, Wilkes maintained as we should now, were constitutionally applicable only to min isters; and for the next seven years devoted himself with remark able pertinacity to securing Wilkes's exclusion from parliament, browbeating ministers and influencing private members to carry out the vendetta against him.
By 1763 King George III. had recovered for the throne a good deal of the power and influence which had nominally been left to it by the Revolution, but which had largely lapsed during the reigns of the first two Georges. Constitutionally the king could choose and direct his own ministers, subject of course to the power left to parliament to force their dismissal if they failed to obtain the support of the majority to the king's policy. But now that the king had wrested from the Whigs the means of influencing electors and members of the unrepresentative House of Commons, he was comparatively untrammelled by parliament. It is true that the old parliamentary groups, from which he had to make his choice of ministers, remained : but by his power of patronage he was able in every group to secure a section of personal adherents, always ready to vote for the king's measures even against their own party and hence soon known collectively as "king's friends." But even so there was always a danger that a minister of deter mination and pronounced views might run counter to the king's wishes; so George III. took the additional precaution of having always a familiar, changed from time to time, either in the cabinet or on its outer fringes, who should report confidentially on the attitude of his colleagues and generally act as the king's spy. Egmont is perhaps the first who emerged in this character ; and for short periods Hertford and Rochford seem to have played a similar part. But Northington was the most efficient of these ad juncts, especially in breaking up the first Rockingham adminis tration ; until finally the king found the ideal man in North, the prime minister himself. Such, in short, was the system by which the king tried to establish his personal rule as the Patriot King, on whom, as Bolingbroke lyrically exclaimed, "the eyes of a whole people are fixed, filled with admiration and glowing with affection." He was to decide on all measures, his ministers were to be chosen, not from one party, but each according to his fitness for the post he occupied, in the duties of which he was to be responsible to the king alone : in fact, when the system was at its zenith during North's ministry, the cabinet met as a body only when the king summoned it to consider some report of one of his ministers on which he desired further advice.
But the system was not perfected in a day. In spite of all precautions the right ministers to carry it out were not easy to find. Bute, whom the king afterwards described as "deficient in political firmness," resigned immediately after the Treaty of Paris (1763) , and George Grenville was tried. But he and his allies, the Bedfords, had not learned the lesson and still attempted to lecture and browbeat the king, as if they were the masters, as in the old days of the Whig supremacy. So Grenville had to go (1765)—not, however, before he had passed the Stamp Act with the king's full approbation—and was succeeded by Rockingham and his party of remnants from the glorious days of Newcastle. Such a ministry was obviously not what the king wanted, was only tolerable for the moment as a means of escape from Grenville, and was intrigued against by the king almost from the start.
When the Rockingham ministry had been sufficiently sapped by Northington, George was able to turn to the one man whom he expected to share his views about a non-party ministry. Pitt in deed had always declared for "measures, not men," and was supremely indifferent to the claims of party when it was a question of national policy, so that superficially there appeared to be the elements of agreement between the two, especially when Pitt formed his ministry (1766) from men of all parties without dis tinction. No doubt had Chatham, as he had become, retained his faculties and been able to guide the ministry, he, not the king, would have settled its policy, for he was not apt to take his orders from anyone. But, after his virtual retirement within a few months, the ministry he had formed to carry out his own policy proved to be exactly the one best suited to carry out the king's system of government. When by 177o Chatham, Shelburne, Graf ton and Camden had all resigned and Lord North was promoted to the Treasury, the king at last had a ministry in which all the members, and above all their chief North, took their orders directly from him. Not only the general policy but the minutest details of administration were conveyed in the king's daily letters to North and other ministers. For the succeeding twelve years, therefore, the policy of the country was essentially that of the king.
Not only was the king the director of the national policy during the war with America (1776-83), but there is little doubt that he had the country on his side in that policy. George III. stood for the principle that Parliament, under his guidance, had the right to legislate for the colonies, and though Chatham might quite fairly insist on the distinction between general legislation applicable to the whole empire as within the purview of the imperial parliament and legislation affecting only the colonies, on which they had a clear right to decide through their own representatives, and Burke point to the calamitous consequences of alienating America, such distinctions or appeals left cold the bulk of the population of England, who felt that the colonies were ungrateful children, ready to profit from the security our arms had gained for them, but unwilling to pay the price. It was not indeed the merits of the war in which the king was the prime mover that finally dis gusted the country; but the series of calamities which marked its progress. For these the king's system of government was chiefly responsible. He himself did all that such a man could do. He supervised the general policy and even more meticulously the details of administration. As is made abundantly clear in his cor respondence recently published', he delighted in taking re sponsibility upon his own shoulders. He practically assumes the duty of leader of the House by his constant and detailed directions to North as to the conduct of business, he thinks no labour too great in inspecting troops or dockyards, in settling how regiments are to be raised, foreign mercenaries to be hired or naval expedi tions to be equipped and, incidentally, devotes quite as much care to deciding how, on a journey to Portsmouth, his equerries and other attendants are to travel and what horses and carriages are to be taken from the royal stables. He certainly did not want courage, either physical or moral, as he showed throughout his life. "Let not this check dismay You," he wrote to Grafton, "in this World these things will happen, therefore rest assured that it will if possible stimulate me to act with greater vigour" : as is well known, during the Gordon riots he and his old enemy Wilkes seem to have been the only people who did not lose their heads: when poor North moaned to him about the expense of the war he rebukes him for "weighing such events in the Scale of a Trades man behind his Counter" : he tells Sandwich that "the English Lion when roused has not only his wonted resolution but has added the swiftness of the Race Horse" : and when there is some diffi culty about Howe accepting the American command he writes to poor North, "Before I get to dinner I just take up my pen to acquaint You that things are very far from desperate, that if no one will interfere I do not despair of bringing things to rights . . . therefore rest satisfied till You hear more from Me." But the trouble was that, though in some respects a shrewd judge of men when he was not crossed, George III. had not the eagle eye of a Chatham in planning and supervising a campaign, and still less the ability to make lesser men carry out his bidding. And owing to his calculated aversion to really able men who would undertake responsibility, he had to rely on ministers like Lord George Germain, incompetent and quarrelsome, odious too for his behaviour at Minden, North, a timorous soul, Sandwich, an evil liver, as the king himself admitted. Scandals in his own family, which led to the Royal Marriages Act of 17 70, and his patent inability to control the excesses of his graceless heir did not add to the king's popularity, and cast doubts on his competence. Above all, his extravagant methods of securing a complacent par liament by the distribution of sinecures and even direct money bribes were at last beginning to awaken alarm. Debts amounting to over f 1,0oo,000 on his ample civil List, which had to be paid by the nation while engaged in this "bloody and expensive" war, and the wasteful extravagance of the royal household under a king notoriously parsimonious were rightly attributed to the unavowed exercise of "influence," and tended to unite opposition in the country and even in the House, in a way that Wilkes, the Amer ican war and Junius's gross attack on the king had all failed to do. Finally in 178o the hitherto docile House of Commons accepted Dunning's motion that "the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished" : a resolution that George III. attributed merely to a few "factious Leaders and ruined men," who wished to overturn "this excellent Constitution . . . the most beautiful Combination that ever was framed." But two years later, when England, with almost all Europe against her, was forced, after Yorktown, to give up the struggle in America, George at last realized that his attempt to govern on the lines of the "Patriot King" had finally failed. So fully was he aware of this that on two separate occasions he seriously contem plated abdication ; and on both occasions drew up messages to announce his decision to Parliament. The first occasion was in when he was forced to take a Rockingham ministry after North's fall, the second when, on the defeat of Shelburne (1783), he saw no alternative to the hated Fox-North coalition. These draft messages are drawn up with a dignity of language all the more striking as they are a complete admission of failure. He 'Correspondence of George III. from r76o to r783 edited by Hon. Sir John Fortescue, 6 vols., 1927-28.
emphasizes his scrupulous respect for the "Rights of Parliament," a perfectly true claim, since in normal times its composition gave him complete control over it. His more detailed reasons set forth in the drafts of 1 783 give the best exposition of his principles of government and incidentally suggest the reasons for their ultimate failure. His "pleasing hope," he declares to have been that, "He might have proved the happy Instrument of conciliating all Par ties, and thus collecting to the Service of the State, the most able Persons this Nation produced. . . . This Patriotic Endeavour has proved unsuccessful, by the Obstinacy of a Powerful Combination that has long manifested a resolution of not entering into Public Service, unless the whole Executive management of affairs is thrown entirely into their hands." In other words George III. was beaten by the demand for full responsibility of the people's representatives for the executive as well as the legislative func tions of government.
The year 1783, therefore, marks a clear epoch, not only in the reign of George III., but also in our constitutional history. It is perfectly true that the king did not in a day give up his in grained ambition "to be a king," and that there are many instances after the date of his draft abdication in 1783 of successful at tempts by him to influence the government. He took an active part in securing the rejection of Fox's India Bill in 1783 and in dismissing the Coalition; and the Parliamentary Papers of John Robinson (Camden Series, 1922) afford conclusive evidence that Pitt's victory at the polls in 1784 was largely due to the active interference of the king in the elections. Pitt's resignation in March 1801 was entirely due to the king's refusal to agree to his minister's policy of conciliation to the Catholics; his refusal to admit Fox into Pitt's reconstituted ministry of 1804 was decisive. Although he admitted Fox into the ministry of All the Talents in 1806 and even went so far as to tell him that "I have no desire to look back upon old grievances, and you may rest assured that I never shall remind you of them," yet when, after Fox's death, the ministry wished to allow Roman Catholics to join the army, he not only flatly refused, but forced their resignation by demand ing a written assurance that they would never again bring up the Catholic question in any form. All this is true, just as it is true that George IV. and William IV. and even Victoria and Edward VII. still could exercise a certain amount of personal influence in the composition of a ministry or on the execution of its measures. But largely owing to the long ministry of Pitt, who, no more than his father, was one to take directions from a king or anyone else as to the policy he thought good, the growth of the cabinet's and still more of a strong prime minister's independence became an established understanding of the constitution. It is to be remem bered too that the unwillingness of Pitt and other ministers to op pose a strong prejudice of the king, such as that against the Catholic claims or against Fox, was almost entirely due to the fear of inducing another bout of insanity in their master and not to any concession to the king's view of his own powers.
As early as 1765 there appeared symptoms of insanity in the king during a comparatively trivial illness, but they soon passed off. In October 1788, however, his madness was unmistakable. He became violent and a danger even to those who loved him best, and had to be put under restraint. Unfortunately he was at first put under the care of ignorant doctors, whose only idea of treating madness was by means of a strait waistcoat and even more brutal measures. At last he came under the charge of Dr. Willis, who had introduced a new method of soothing and persuasive treat ment. Even more pathetic were the political squabbles that ensued over the Regency Bill. The obvious regent was the Prince of Wales, but, as he was a bitter opponent of the king and conse quently an ally of Fox and all the disappointed Whigs, Pitt nat urally thought that his powers during the king's temporary illness should be limited. Feeling grew very bitter on the subject, the doctors were dragged into the dispute, and the Prince's ribaldry about his unfortunate father became a public scandal. Fortunately under Willis's treatment the king recovered by March 1789, and the contentious Regency Bill was dropped. Again in the first half of 18oI he had bouts of madness under the excitement of the Catholic question and again in 1804 and 181o; in 1811 after the death of his favourite daughter, Amelia, his insanity became per manent, a Regency Bill was passed, and the old king remained in seclusion, blind as well as mad, till his death on Jan. 29, 1820.
During the first twenty-three years of his reign, when he was at tempting to revive personal government, George III. enjoyed little of his people's affection. The dynasty had never yet achieved popularity, and George III., in spite of the bright hopes with which he ascended the throne, had done very little to win it for himself. At first he was overshadowed by the popular hero, Pitt, and his predilection for the Scotsman Bute did not help him. Few stories likely to endear him with the people radiated from the court, for he hardly saw any even of his ministers except on busi ness or at formal levees, and for choice lived frugally in the dull seclusion of his domestic circle. His devotion to public business took no romantic turn, for he rarely captivated his people by such appeals as Pitt's in the Seven Years' War, and his industry was rather that of a clerk than of a great statesman. So immersed was he in the routine duties of his office that until 1788, when he went to drink the waters at Cheltenham, he had never, according to Wraxall, stirred further from London than the Nore, Coxe Heath, Oxford and Portsmouth. But, paradoxically, when he was no longer the real master in the state his popularity increased enor mously. The first strong demonstration of this new popularity was on his recovery from his illness in 1789, partly no doubt from sympathy with his affliction, partly in indignation at his son's and his friends' hardly concealed hope that he would not recover. Af ter that his popularity never waned. His sturdy conservatism— "I will have no innovations in my time," as he said to Eldon— and even his narrow obstinacy in the American War and in resist ing Catholic claims; still more his determination to fight on against the French regardless of defeats and desertions by allies, struck a sympathetic chord in the hearts of his subjects. And as he became better known, with his little trick of repetition and his "What? What?" at the end of every sentence, especially during his visits to Weymouth, where he talked unceasingly and shrewdly, if not always cleverly, with all and sundry about their homely concerns, their apple-dumplings and so on, he won the love of his countrymen as "farmer George," one of themselves, with the same tastes, though a king, as the country folk with whom he loved to gossip ; in fact, as Wraxall observed, by the end of his reign "his virtues had obtained for him a higher place in our esteem than any prince has occupied since the conquest." Viewing him from a greater distance of time, we can say of him that few kings have shown greater courage, both moral and physical, in accepting responsibility or affronting actual danger— "he could not bear," he once said, "that any of his family should want courage." With little appreciation of beauty he preferred West to Reynolds, thought little of Shakespeare's "sad stuff," and had "no taste for what was called the fine, wild, beauties of nature; he did not like mountains and other romantic scenes, of which he sometimes heard much"; still he had a good taste in music and was a generous and interested patron of science and learning— f or is it not to him that we owe the nucleus of the British Museum Library? Though almost malignant in his vendettas against greater men such as Chatham who had crossed his purposes, yet when he had accepted defeat he could be a generous loser, as in his remark to Fox already quoted and in his speech to Adams, the first envoy to St. James's from the United States :—"I will be very frank with you. I was the last to consent to the separation : but the separa tion 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." Lastly, not the least service he rendered the country was the homely do mesticity, even the dullness of his life. Thereby he set a standard of faithful troth in the relations of private life, which was new at any rate in the court circles of England and which has survived even the Regency to become almost a commonplace of modern English life. (See genealogical table in article ENGLISH HISTORY.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Correspondence of George III. from 176o to 1783 Bibliography.—Correspondence of George III. from 176o to 1783 (ed. Fortescue) 6 vols., 1927-28 ; this contains, inter alia, the king's letters in Corr. of Geo. III. with Lord North (ed. Donne) 2 vols. 1867, but the latter book has useful notes. Geo. Rose, Diaries & Corr. 2 vols. 186o, has some illuminating talks with the king. Most of the Memoirs and Correspondence of the latter half of the 18th century have information about Geo. III. The Histories of England by J. Adolphus (1803, etc.) & W. N. Massey (4 vols., 1855-63) have first hand stories. J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of Life & Reign of Geo. III., 3 vols., 1867, may also be consulted. L. Melville, Farmer George, 2 vols., 1907, and B. Willson, Geo. III. as man, monarch and statesman, 1907, are more recent compilations about him. (B. Wi.)