George III. was the eldest son of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, and was born in London, at Norfolk House, St James's Square, on 4th June 1738. Being a seven-months' child, and very weakly, the boy was not expected to survive, and at eleven at night he was privately baptised by Dr Secker, who was Bishop of Oxford and rector of the parish of St James. On 2d July the bishop performed the ceremony publicly, the boy being named George William Frederick, and his sponsors being the King of Sweden, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and the Queen of Prussia. On 25th October 1760 George II. died suddenly, and his grandson ascended the throne. The new king was the first member of the House of Brunswick who commanded general respect on becoming the sovereign over Great Britain and Ireland. At the same time he became Elector of Hanover, a title which was exchanged for that of king in 1815, when he was incapacitated for performing his duties, and unconscious of what passed in the world. He was the only one of the four Georges who never visited his German dominions. In his first speech to parliament he said: 'Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton, and the peculiar happiness of my life will ever consist in promoting the welfare of a people whose loyalty and warm affection to me I consider the greatest and most permanent security of my throne.' These words were inserted by himself in the speech composed by the Earl of Hardwicke and approved by the ministry. At the outset George III. conciliated all classes of his subjects. Horace Walpole thus describes from personal observation the nature of the change: 'For the king himself, he seems all good nature and wishing to satisfy everybody. All his speeches are obliging. I saw him yesterday, and was surprised to find the levée-room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. The sovereign does not stand in one spot with his eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news. He walks about and speaks freely to everybody. I saw him afterwards on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity, and reads his addresses well.' On 8th September 1761 he married Charlotte Sophia, Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, his bride being in her eighteenth and he in his twenty-third year. A fortnight after their marriage they were crowned. As a younger man he was supposed to have had children by Hannah Lightfoot, a beautiful Quakeress, and to have married her, but no proof of this marriage has ever been advanced. It is less open to doubt that, after ascending the throne, he wished to marry Lady Sarah Lennox, and that his mother used her influence to bring about a marriage with one who, like herself, was a German princess.
George III. owed it to his mother that he was strongly imbued with a desire to govern as well as reign. 'George, be king,' was the phrase which she repeated, and the training which he had received made him give heed to it. Bolingbroke, in writing the Idea of a Patriot King, had the expectation of persuading Frederick, Prince of Wales, and father of George III., to act the part. The substance of Bolingbroke's teaching was that a king should be the father of his people, that he was the man best qualified to know what would be for their good, and the one best entitled to make them do as he deemed right. Thus George III. felt certain that his own way was the true one, and that were it followed all would go well. The friction which soon became manifest between him and his people was chiefly due to his determination to have his own way. Pitt was the popular idol; but the king disliked Pitt and his policy, and the Earl of Bute became prime-minister in the place of the Duke of Newcastle. It was commonly believed that Bute was both the favourite of the king and the lover of his mother; he was a Scottish nobleman who dispensed patronage to his countrymen, and he was execrated on account of his birth, his position, and his conduct. If he had been a strong man, he might have justified his promotion, but, being both timid and incompetent, he succumbed to popular clamour. His premiership lasted from May 1762 till April 1763. George Grenville, his successor, was premier for two years. The Marquis of Rockingham, who followed him, held the office for eleven months, the Earl of Chatham for fourteen months, and the Duke of Grafton held it for three years. These short-lived administrations were due to the king pitting one section of the Whig party against the other, in order to escape falling under the domination of the great Whig families, the result being that a party was formed which was known as 'the king's friends.' George III. found in Lord North a minister after his own heart, and Lord North remained at the head of the government from January 1770 till March 1782. During the administration of Lord North the thirteen united colonies proclaimed and achieved their independence, and were acknowledged by France and Spain as the United States of America. The determination of the king not to grant any concessions to those whom he deemed rebels caused the struggle to be protracted, and shut the door against compromise while compromise was possible. The subservience of parliament and the acquiescence of the country enabled the king to have his own way. Lord North was succeeded by the Marquis of Rockingham, who died after he had been three months in office. Among his colleagues were Charles James Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, three of the most brilliant members of the Opposition, and three men whom George III. detested. Lord Shelburne, who was a member of the same administration, took Rockingham's place, but the colleagues just named and others refused to serve with him; on the other hand, he secured the services of William Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The friends of Charles James Fox and the followers of Lord North coalesced, and overthrew the Shelburne administration after it had been ten months in office; and the Duke of Portland became the head of a coalition ministry which entered office in April 1783, and was compelled to leave it, owing to the underhand action of the king, in December of that year. In the interval the definitive treaty of peace with the United States of America was signed, and the India Bill was brought before parliament, a measure of which Burke was the chief author, Fox the warm advocate, and George III. the irreconcilable foe.
In December 1783 William Pitt, then in his twenty-fourth year, formed an administration in which he was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury, and he remained in office for eighteen years. The crushing victory of his party at the general election in 1784 was a triumph for the king as much as for Pitt. From that date there was an end to the supremacy of the old Whig families. The Tory party had been consolidated and was prepared to give effect to the policy of George III. The struggle had been long and severe. John Wilkes had taken part in it, and by his audacious resistance he had led to the abolition of general warrants. The writer whose letters were signed Junius had denounced the ministers whom the king trusted, and had warned the king himself that, as his title to the crown 'was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another.' That popular feeling ran high against the sovereign for a time is unquestionable, yet he gradually regained the affections of his subjects; hence, when it was announced in 1788 that he had lost his reason, there was a widespread sympathy with him. His eldest son had displayed vices from which he was free, and the people did not think the substitution of the Prince of Wales for the king would be a gain to the country. Two years before a mad woman, named Margaret Nicholson, had tried to stab the king, and the addresses of congratulation upon his escape then showed how general was the popular feeling. In 1765 he had an illness lasting two months, in which his reason was affected. On his recovery at that time there was no rejoicing such as took place when, on 23d April 1789, he went to St Paul's to render thanks for his recovery. The Prince of Wales, who had counted upon becoming regent, openly displayed ill-humour at his father's reception. A proof of public feeling was that a play in which Mrs Siddons took a leading part had to be withdrawn from the stage after one representation, because it bore the obnoxious name of 'The Regent.' The marriage of this son to Princess Caroline of Brunswick gave the king much gratification. It took place on 8th April 1794. Three years later the Princess Royal became the wife of the hereditary Prince of Wirtemberg. The king's second son, the Duke of York, had married the eldest daughter of Frederick II. of Prussia in 1791. George III. had a large family; it numbered nine sons and six daughters, the first child, the Prince of Wales, being born in 1762, and the last, the Princess Amelia, in 1783. The king had no fear of his children acting like his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, when he married Mrs Horton, or like the Duke of Gloucester, when he married the Countess of Waldegrave. The Royal Marriage Act, which was passed at his instance in 1772, forbade the members of the royal family marrying without the consent of the sovereign, if under twenty-five, or doing so after that age unless a twelvemonth's notice had been given to the Privy-council, and parliament had not expressed disapprobation within that period.
Though George III. was averse to war, he was strongly in favour of restoring the Bourbons to the throne of France. When the union between Ireland and Great Britain was proposed he wrote to Pitt characterising it as one of the most useful measures of his reign; but when the union was effected, and Pitt proposed carrying out his pledges with regard to the emancipation of the Roman Catholics and the endowment of the Roman Catholic priests, the king refused his assent, saying, as Lord Eldon records, 'I can give up my crown and retire from power; I can quit my palace and live in a cottage; I can lay my head on a block and lose my life; but I can not break my coronation oath.' Pitt resigned; George III. refused his advice to form a strong administration, including Fox. The king's hatred of Fox amounted to mania; he wrongfully attributed the bad conduct of the Prince of Wales to association with the great Whig leader. Hence the king entrusted Addington with the task of forming an administration, which held office till war with France was renewed, and the necessity for a firmer hand at the helm was apparent. Pitt resumed the office of premier, and died in 1806. A ministry was formed on 5th March 1806, in which Fox and Sidmouth held office, and of which Lord Grenville was the head; it was reconstituted after Fox's death on 13th September in that year, and it was succeeded in 1807 by one of which the Duke of Portland was the head, and in which Perceval was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Canning a secretary of state. In 1809 Perceval succeeded to the premiership, and this was the last administration in forming which George III. had any share. His jubilee was celebrated amid popular rejoicings on the 25th October 1809. In 1810 Princess Amelia, his youngest and favourite child, became dangerously ill; the unlikelihood of her recovery preyed upon him and hastened an attack of mental derangement, which incapacitated him for reigning. He had suffered from this malady more than once since 1789. In 1810 the Prince of Wales was appointed regent. Till his death, on 29th January 1820, at Windsor Castle (he was the first English king who died there), George III. was hopelessly insane. He lost his sight as well as his senses.
Though not a drop of English blood ran in his veins, yet George III. was a typical Englishman. He was well-meaning and intensely patriotic; he was truly pious and a pattern of the domestic virtues. His reign was marked by many vicissitudes, and it extended over sixty years. Decisive battles in America, India, and Europe were fought during its course, and many grand conquests were achieved. Great statesmen, such as Chatham, Pitt, and Fox, adorned it; great captains, such as Nelson and Wellington, made their names immortal; the greatest names in modern English literature then rose above the horizon; parliamentary oratory was at its zenith, and nothing was wanting to render the reign the most glorious in the country's annals but greater discretion on the part of the king. If George III. had been a little less of the typical Englishman, he might have been a more admirable sovereign. It was chiefly owing to his prejudices being respected by those who ought to have opposed them that war took the place of conciliation in America, and that war was prosecuted against France, when the interests of the country demanded neutrality among the contending powers on the Continent. When George III. ascended the throne the national debt, in round numbers, was £138,000,000 sterling; before his death it was upwards of £800,000,000. On the other hand, the trade and commerce of the country made gigantic strides during his reign. At his accession the exports did not exceed £12,000,000 sterling; at his death they were upwards of £50,000,000. The imports between that period rose from £8,000,000 to £36,000,000 sterling. At the beginning of the last forty years of his reign the number of newspapers in the three kingdoms was 61; at his death the number was 222. Several years before he died the Times newspaper was printed by steam, and the foundations of the daily press as it now exists were laid in the reign of a sovereign who was no favourer of newspapers. The greatest of his misfortunes was to be the father of the eldest son who succeeded him, and it is when George IV. is considered that the merits of George III. become the more conspicuous, and that 'Farmer George,' as he was familiarly called during his lifetime, appears a nobler figure in history than the 'First Gentleman in Europe,' as his eldest son was styled.
See the histories of England by Stanhope, Massey, Martineau, and Lecky; the Memoirs and Letters of H. Walpole; the Grenville Papers; the Chatham, Rockingham, Bedford, Auckland, and Malmesbury Correspondence; the Letters of George III. to Lord North; Burke's Works; the Letters of Junius; the Annual Register; and The Opposition under George III., by Fraser Rae.