Mad King George

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Colegiul National Unirea Brașov

Mad King George Profesor coordonator: elev: Caterina Radu Magdalena Luca clasa a XII-a D

Brasov

2015

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Table of contents

Motivation...........................................................................3

Chapter 1: Early life and first years of reign..........................4

Chapter 2: Illness.................................................................7

Chapter 3: The American Revolution.....................................9

Chapter 4: Crown’s decline and death..................................13

Conclusion...........................................................................14

Bibliography.........................................................................15

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Motivation

There is a wide interest paid for the intriguing behavior of any famous person, especially royal and political personalities.

However, almost no one pays interest in searching for the causes of that tyrannic, excessive behavior.

I myself have always been fascinated with behavioral psychology

as well as with Great Britain's history. The following topic presents probably the most interesting case of reign in the British

Kingdom – King George, a diseased and weak ruler, yet compassionate and willing to be a good one.

His illness was not to be healed, and the treatments at the time

were only worsening his little bit of health. His people did not necessarly hate him, but then again, they did not love him too

much. It was not understandable for a country as that to lose its power of influence, nor were the King’s progressive crisis that led

to the crown decline.

My goal is that to prove that it was not King George the one who did wrong, but his illness, to him firstly and then to the British

people. I believe that people are able to see through appearances with the help of scientific knowledge which is the real story of

George III of the United Kingdom that follows.

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Mad King George (1760-1820)

Early life and first years of reign

George III was only twenty-two

years old when he ascended the throne. He was the third

Hanoverian monarch and the first one to be born in England

and to use English as his first language. Since his father's

death, he hainen brought uwastestrict seclusion by his

mother and her counsellor – Earl of Bute, taught to believe

that it was his vocation to break the Whig aristocracy, and their

power of patronage and corruption. As a boy he was a

poor pupil, willing enough, but

lacking concentration.

When he was a teenager, he met a young woman by the name of

Lady Sarah Lenox. They fell in love and swore they would be married one day, but when George

suggested the match, many of the people close to him disapproved. He then wrote to Sarah and told her "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation, and consequently must often act contrary to my passions."

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By the time George became king in 1760, Britain had been in the "Seven Years War” with France for four years. At this time, they

were still fighting over who the leading colonial power of that day and age was. Britain had a large advantage, because its royal

navy could not be matched.

On September 8, 1761 he married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who gave birth to seven sons and eight daughters.

Although he did not meet her until his wedding day, he vowed to love her and be good to her for the rest of his life, and he did. He

was completely devoted to her and their fifteen children who would come later. His high sense of morality kept him

monogamous and a very good family man.

By 1768 – after seven

years of dependence on Bute, he knew his

routine duties and the ceremonial of

monarchy. Extremely conscientious, George

read all government papers and sometimes

annoyed his ministers by taking such a

prominent interest in government and policy. It was perhaps emotional strain that

induced his first so-called fit of madness in 1765. Further signs of the disease showed up in 1788-1789. From 1811 to the time of

his death in 1820 the royal patient became progressively insane and blind. He was nursed in isolation, and kept in straight

jackets and behind bars in his private apartments at Windsor Castle.

After his sons disappointed him and, after his brothers made

unsuitable secret marriages, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 was passed at George's insistence. (Under this Act, the Sovereign

must give consent to the marriage of any lineal descendant of George II, with certain exceptions.)

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Several explosive issues buffeted George and his government

during the first 2 decades of his reign. Most significant were the turbulences created by the political reformer John Wilkes and by

the American colonies. The pious King regarded the disreputable Wilkes with horror and hatred. By prosecuting the popular

Wilkes, George further increased both his personal unpopularity and the public's lack of confidence in his government. But the

exercise of power depended not on mob approval but on the favour of the gentry in the House of Commons. As the American

war dragged on, the government's lack of success together with the haranguing of the Opposition alienated many of the gentry

who had formerly voted for the King's policies. Furthermore, large segments of influential public opinion outside Parliament

disapproved of the American war and of government policy and wished for administrative reform and economy. North's ministry

fell in 1782, and the American colonies won their independence. These two events ushered in a new phase in British government

and in the life of George III.

Outside politics George III showed a lively interest in the voyages of discovery in the Pacific and in Canadian waters. The Privy

Purse – his private income - made grants to the infant Royal Academy of Arts. He was the first king to study science as part of

his education (he had his own astronomical observatory), and examples of his collection of scientific instruments can now be

seen in the Science Museum. George started a new royal collection of books (65,000 of his books were later given to the

British Museum, as the nucleus of a national library) and opened his library to scholars. A great collection of maps, model ships,

coins and of oil paintings was started. The King's overriding enthusiasm was for farming, and he was often called 'Farmer

George', who also constructed model farms at Windsor Castle.

George III is widely remembered for two things: losing the American colonies and going mad. But this is far from the whole

truth.

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Illness

He had already been ill in 1765, but the symptoms had been concealed. In 1788 his insanity became beyond all doubt, for he

had become violent. In recent times it has been recognised that this was not simply a mental affliction. It was porphyria, a rare,

inherited disorder transmitted by females from a male ancestor. It

had not hitherto been recorded in the royal family.

The nature of the king's illness

was much discussed. Of the severe mental disturbance, albeit

intermittent, there can be no doubt, and the treatment of

lunatics in that period was so brutal that the king's fears and

resentments are easily understood. The contemporary

explanation by the medical consultants was old fashioned and bizarre: George's condition was, in their opinion, caused by a

`humour' in the legs, which the king's own imprudence (omitting to change wet stockings) `drove from thence into the bowels' .

Nineteenth-century historians, few of them sympathetic to the king, were content to accept his illness as lunacy, either an

inherited defect or the result of external pressures.

However, the real cause of his illness is a disturbance of the balance of the metabolism of porphyrine, the breakdown products

of the red blood pigment. It can affect the liver or the bone marrow, or both. The urine becomes discoloured, the body over-

sensitive to sunlight, causing blistering skin rashes, bouts of abdominal pain, mental disturbance and neuritis.

It is not easy to know whether the next and ominous development

was a cause or a consequence of the political upheaval. But on 13 February 1801, amid the crisis, the king was unwell, and by the

17th he was excited, talkative, and hoarse. On the 21st he told Thomas Willis, son of Francis Willis and rector of St George's,

Bloomsbury, “I have prayed to God all night, that I might die, or

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that he would spare my reason”. That night he became delirious,

and the next day John Willis,Thomas's brother and a now a mad-doctor like their father, was called in to take charge of the king;

he was subsequently joined by a third Willis brother, Robert. This bout of illness formally lasted some four weeks, officially ending

by 14 March when the king was well enough to receive the seals of office from Pitt, and thereby avoiding putting into effect plans

for a regency. It took longer for the king to extricate himself from his doctors, as he continued to show signs of agitation for several

months; on 19 April he was effectively kidnapped by the Willises, with the queen's support, and was not able to escape them until

19 May. His illness left George thinner, exhausted, and less resilient, and his eyesight was also causing concern. Worst of all,

under the severe strain his relations with the queen had deteriorated. She was terrified of a return of violence and perhaps

upset by his obscene language in delirium. The queen was a firm supporter of the Willises, whose methods the king detested. Her

temper worsened, much of it directed at the princesses, and she locked her bedroom room door against her husband. “It is a melancholy circumstance”, remarked Lord Hobart, “to see a family that had lived so well together, for such a number of years, completely broken up”. The last ten years of his life were spent in a twilight world. His

eyesight deteriorated until he was completely blind and he was increasingly afflicted by deafness. Treatment was left in the

hands of the mad-doctors, John and Robert Willis and Samuel Simmons, with the queen's blessing, and for the most part

conventional physicians were excluded from day-to-day access to the king. Deprived for the most part of the stimulus of visitors,

conversation, and outings, he took refuge in the past, sometimes times real, often invented, talking to Lord North, long dead, and

inspecting imaginary parades. “In short” wrote Dr. Heberden, “he appears to be living in another world and has lost almost all interest in the concerns of this”.

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The American Revolution

The Seven Years' War had freed the American colonies from their

French enemies, and given them a great western country into which their settlements could spread. It had also given them a

knowledge of their own strength, and loosened the ties which bound them to the mother country. With the danger of French

attack removed, they had no further need of British protection.

In 1770 Lord North became prime minister, beginning a 12-year

period of parliamentary stability. In 1773 he passed an act taxing tea in the colonies. The Americans complained of taxation without

representation (and staged the Boston Tea Party), but North held firm with George’s backing. To Parliament, the Boston Tea Party

confirmed Massachusetts’s role as the core of resistance to

legitimate British rule. The Coercive Acts of 1774 were intended to punish the colony in general and Boston in particular, both for

the Tea Party and for the pattern of resistance it exemplified.

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The colonies had mines of iron and coal, forests, navigable rivers,

and excellent harbors, and were fitted by nature not only for agriculture, but also for manufactures and commerce. Many

people, therefore, engaged in the building of ships and in trade. England's

treatment of its colonies was very

much better than

that which any other country gave

to its colonies at this time, and even

such laws as did limit their

commerce were, for a long time,

allowed to remain unenforced. Thus

the colonies flourished, and grew strong.

King George never did understand Americans. Although he admitted that “no one likes a tax increase”, he believed that given

that the thirteen colonies had been self-governing themselves for years, that should be enough for them. The colonists' slogan: “No

Taxation Without Representation,” appeared for the first time in the February 1768 London Magazine’s headline, on page 69, in

the printing of Lord Camden’s "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies.". This was

shortly followed by colonists fighting the British soldiers. King George was outraged that Americans dared to fight his soldiers,

but he was convinced that the British military would soon bring the rebels to their knees. He said, “Once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit.” The American Revolution began on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The

next year, the Declaration of Independence laid out the Americans’ case for freedom, portraying George III as an inflexible

tyrant who had squandered his right to govern the colonies. In reality the situation was more complex: Parliamentary ministers,

not the crown, were responsible for colonial policies, though

George still had means of direct and indirect influence.

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The king was not waiting to hear any declarations of independence. In a speech to Parliament, George declared the

American colonies to be in an official state of rebellion. The king called Patriot leaders “wicked and desperate persons” and vowed

to “bring the traitors to justice.” In order to stop the rebellion, Britain needed more soldiers. King George rented some from

Germany, paying German princes thousands pounds so that they sent over their soldiers to fight for Britain. Moreover, the princes

gained extra-cash for every soldier killed. As in the spring of 1776 Americans started reading that boats full of German soldiers were

on their way west across the Atlantic Ocean, it made more of them think it was time

to declare independence.

By the end of the war,

as British soldiers

started to surrender, Britain accepted little

by little that they were not to win this war. The

king was reluctant to come to terms with his

army’s defeat at Yorktown in 1781. “I have no doubt,” he

wrote, “that when men are a little recovered

from the shock felt by the bad news … they will then find the necessity of carrying on the war.” When it became obvious to the

king that he was the only one who felt this way, he got so depressed that he actually tried to give up his crown, giving this

speech, also declaring that he would take refuge in his closet and see no one, not because of military disasters, but because he

could not face quarrels about peerage promotions: “His Majesty therefore with much sorrow finds he can be of no further utility to his native country, which drives him to the painful step of quitting it forever.”

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The American Revolution officially ended on September 3, 1783,

with the signing of a peace treaty in Paris. Now everyone, even the King, had to admit the United States of America was a free and

independent country. The loss of the American colonies seemed, at the time, a great

calamity. But the British Empire has become greater and more powerful, since the separation, than it ever was before; and in

America there has developed a great nation, of kindred speech and institutions.

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Crown's decline and death

The causes of the crown's decline were many and insidious, but included the great growth in public opinion (manifested in

newspapers and petitions), the consolidation of party loyalties which ultimately diminished the crown's choice of ministers, the

financial debility of the monarchy, the decline in crown patronage, the rise in the power of the

first minister, and the growing complexity of public business the last of

which also sounded the knell for the amateur gentleman in politics. George

III fought a steady and not unsuccessful rearguard action for the rights of the monarchy, conscious of his

duty, determined to remain briefed and informed, but increasingly handicapped by age and ill health.

“I do not pretend to any superior abilities”, he wrote, “but will give place to no one in meaning to preserve the freedom, happiness and glory of my dominions and all their inhabitants, and to fulfill the duty to my God and my neighbour in the most extended sense”. George III died at Windsor Castle on 29 January 1820, after a

reign of almost 60 years – the third longest in British history, and was succeeded by his son George IV.

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Conclusion

All in all, this is in short terms poor Mad King George's life. We

therefore can reevaluate any kind of prejudice we'd had before having read about him and his deathly illness.

After the American War, Britain clearly needed someone to blame,

and it was easy to blame the king, even if it wasn't his fault only for losing the colonies. Although, England learned many lessons

from this war. One of these was how to rule colonies without oppressing them, and so to keep them a source of strength.

Another and greater lesson was this; that the government must obey the will of the people, and not that of the King. The war not

only brought independence to the American colonies; it formed an important step, also, in the process by which greater political

liberty was gained by the people of Great Britain.

I believe that King George was a good man, if not a good ruler. Those times' beliefs and thinking, together with the madness he

had suffered of did not contribute to an auspicious reign from all points of view, but compared to other British rulers, we can tell

that he was far from being the worst.

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Bibliography: BOOKS: The Madness of King George – Frank Chalk George III – John Cannon King George. What was his problem? – Steve Sheinkin & Tim Robinson The Political History of England (vol. X) – William Hunt

SITES: www.britroyals.com www.royal.gov.com FILM: The Madness of King George

Mad King George

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