Useful Notes / George III

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The third British monarch of The House of Hanover, grandson of King George II (his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, having died young), George III (4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) came to the thrones of Great Britain, Ireland, and Hanover on 25 October 1760, aged just 22. He went on to become both the longest-lived and longest-reigning sovereign in British history by that point, and remains the longest-reigning king (the successors who surpassed him both being queens regnant).

Four major events happened during his reign: the American and French Revolutions, the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1800), and The Napoleonic Wars, after which the electorate of Hanover was upgraded to a kingdom. Since George was content to let Parliament run things most of the time (particularly when the Tories were in charge), it's best to just read those articles for further information.

Alas, he is also remembered for going quite insane (probably due to porphyria or bipolar disorder).

The first Hanoverian to have been born in England and raised speaking English, he in fact never visited Hanover in his long life. Unlike his two predecessors, who were mostly interested in their German territories, George's attentions were firmly fixed on Britain; at his coronation speech, he famously proclaimed, "I glory in the name of Briton".^note Or "Britain"; nobody's quite sure, but either way the point is the same. He nevertheless also accepted the principle of constitutional monarchy; his occasional fights with Parliament were rarely all that contentious, and although he experimented with trying to control the government from outside the Cabinet he was never fully invested in that and gave it up as a fool's errand after the end of the American War of Independence. He took a personal interest in agriculture (fitting, given that Britain's Agricultural Revolution reached its height during his reign), and wrote pamphlets on agriculture under the pseudonym Ralph Robinson. These interests earned him the popular appellation "Farmer George".

A perhaps atypically-successful family man for a British monarch, George and his queen Charlotte had a happy marriage (despite first meeting only on their wedding day, when he was already King) and 15 children, of whom eleven lived to the age of at least 60. He was also a remarkably relaxed king, preferring to live in the countryside and much more informally than many of his more traditional courtiers would like; Queen Charlotte agreed with him, going on walks through country towns with him without any servants. A man of great personal piety (spending hours in prayer daily) and morality (never taking a mistress and never drinking to excess, and abhorring the womanizing, boozing, card-playing habits of his father—whom he tried to avoid, per Hanoverian tradition—as well as his brothers and, later, his sons), he is generally remembered as a good king in Britain. He opposed Catholic Emancipation because he believed it would violate the coronation oath he took to 'defend the [Protestant] faith'.

Americans have a more complex opinion on him, but even then most historians believe him to be Mis-blamed—he only had a significant role in the American crisis after the Boston Tea Party (which was beginning of the revolt's turn toward anti-monarchical sentiment), at which point his support for a military response was just one of several trump cards the hawks in Parliament had over the doves. At the time, contemporary Americans were able to distinguish between His Majesty and his Majesty's Parliament, which passed a number of laws which were unpopular in America but which George himself had only so much control of. Until very shortly before war broke out, many Americans liked him. (They liked his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, even more: both Charlotte, North Carolina and Mecklenburg County in which it sits are named for her. Ironically, the city became known as a "hornet's nest of rebellion" during the war). Meanwhile, after the Thirteen Colonies achieved independence, George commented that "I was the last person to consent to the separation [of America and Britain], but I will be the first to accept the friendship of the United States as an independent power."

In 1811, it was thought best that His Majesty, having gone completely cuckoo (this was not the first time, mind, since the first time it happened was when two of his sons died in infancy, causing him to go through Sanity Slippage from grief), should be quietly removed from power. His beloved daughter Amelia, the last of his fifteen children and his favourite among them, had died of illness, and it destroyed him: an attendant of the princess wrote that she could often hear King George cry loudly and in a hearbreakingly way and scream for his daughter. His eldest son George, Prince of Wales (Prinny), took over and was the nominal monarch for the next nine years — this is why Regency England is called such. (It should be noted that from the Civil War onwards, Parliament had been growing in power - over the last century or so it had blossomed. Prinny, thankfully, did not have all that much power).

George would die in 1820 of pneumonia, at Windsor Castle. He was succeeded by his son and regent, who would go by the regnal name of George IV and was the uncle of Queen Victoria.

Portrayals of George III in fiction: