NO TYRANT

King George III was born in London on June 4, 1738. He was the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the grandson of George II. He succeeded his grandfather in 1760, his father having died in 1751. George III was the first of the House of Hanover to be born and educated as an Englishman. He had high but impractical ideas of kingship. George III was the longest reigning of the male British monarchs. George III was king of Great Britain and Ireland and presided over the loss of the American colonies.

Although never an autocratic monarch, George III was always a powerful force in politics. He was a strong supporter of the war against America, and he viewed the concession of independence in 1783 with such detestation that he considered abdicating his throne. At the same time he fought a bitter personal feud with the Whig leader Charles James Fox, and his personal intervention brought the fall of the Fox-North ministry in 1783. He then took a political gamble by placing the government in the hands of William Pitt, thereby restoring stability for the rest of the century. In 1801 he preferred, however, to force Pitt to resign as prime minister rather than permit Catholic Emancipation, a measure that he interpreted as contrary to his coronation oath to uphold the Church of England.

After 1801 George III was increasingly incapacitated by an illness, sometimes identified as porphyry, that caused blindness and senility. His recurring bouts of insanity became a political problem and ultimately compelled him to submit to the establishment of a formal Regency in1811. The regent was his oldest son, the future George IV, one of 15 children borne him by his wife, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

George III was bitterly criticized by Whig historians of his own and later days. He learned quickly, however, and developed into a shrewd and sensible statesman, although one of conservative views. The best loved of the rulers of the House of Hanover, he enjoyed a personal reputation that stood his house in good stead during the disastrous reign of his son George.

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