"The history of the present King of Great Britain
is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,
all having in direct object, the establishment
of an absolute tyranny over these states."
This indictment of George III from the United States
Declaration of Independence has echoed down the centuries.
His reputation endures as a cartoonishly simple, stubborn,
aspiring tyrant whose reign ended with a descent
into madness.
The real story, though, is somewhat different
as we shall discover.
George became King at the age of 22.
He was the first of the Hanoverian monarchs
to have been born in England.
"Convince this nation you are not
only an Englishman born and bred," his father advised,
"but that you are also this by inclination."
George took this to heart, proclaiming to parliament, "I
glory in the name of Briton."
For the next 60 years, George ruled
as he thought a 'Patriot King' should,
defending the Constitution and setting
a moral example for the nation.
The trouble was that George and his critics,
on both sides of the Atlantic, had very different ideas
about the rights of the monarch, parliament, and the colonies.
British radicals and American patriots
were alike convinced that George and his ministers
were attempting to undermine the Constitution and subvert
liberties.
As Professor Harry Dickinson explains.
Radicals could point to the abuse of general warrants,
attempts to muzzle the press, and troop violence
against crowds of demonstrators.
Then there was the refusal of parliament in 1768 and 1769
to accept the clear and repeated verdict of Middlesex voters
in support of the radical John Wilkes.
As a pro-reform newspaper commented at the time,
"the cause of liberty in England and America is one cause.
The attacks on both have been made
by the same men with the same views
and with the same illegal violence."
Domestically though, George's primary objective,
according to Professor Frank O'Gorman,
was not absolutism but rather to free the monarchy from what
he imagined to be its humiliating subjection
to the great Whig Ministers.
The Whigs had long dominated parliament and government
posts, and they had a history of neutering kings,
having orchestrated the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that
removed James II.
In George's view, the Whigs were corrupt
and had abused government patronage to hold on to power
and enslave the monarchy.
In ushering in a new generation of political leaders,
intervening in the lawmaking process
and contributing to the fall of the Fox-North coalition
government in 1783, George felt entirely within his rights.
To critics like Charles James Fox
though, this was evidence of the creeping influence
of the crown.
If domestically George was seeking
to flex the constitutional muscles of the monarchy,
in the American crisis it was the authority of parliament
that was at stake with the King describing himself as "fighting
the battle of the legislature."
The American Revolution saw the clash of two great
constitutional principles -- parliamentary sovereignty
and 'no taxation without representation'.
Parliament asserted its right to tax
the colonies under the former whilst the Americans resisted
citing the latter.
In this dispute, George backed parliament.
He was deeply uneasy about making concessions regarding
the Stamp Act, encouraged keeping the controversial tea
duty, and rejected the Continental Congress's Olive
Branch Petition.
The latter after all came from an assembly his government did
not recognize and from men who had taken up
arms against the crown.
According to Dickinson though, once the conflict began,
the King's role was less significant
than has commonly been assumed.
George was consulted on the conduct of the war, asked
to approve plans, and, at times, was certainly influential,
but he was not the key decision maker.
Doctor Steven Parissien similarly
describes George as relatively hands-off
when you compare him with his European contemporaries
arguing, if the role of the sovereign
is defined more as a job than as a right,
then George III got the balance about right.
This early impression of a constitutional monarchy
with George, a devoted and moral family man,
father of the nation, the embodiment of plain speaking
John Bull, was an image the court
promoted with great success.
'Farmer George', as he was later portrayed,
took pleasure in walking the fields, tilling the soil,
and tending to the animals of the two farms he established
at Windsor.
This became the royal family's principal residence
and, according to the King, "the place I love the best."
"A partaker of honest pleasures",
according to William Thackeray, George liked to live frugally,
breakfasting on dry toast and weak tea,
preferring life on his country estates
to the pomp of the court.
Farmer George was not a philistine though.
The King was a leading patron of the arts,
commissioning many of the greatest artists of the day
and helping to establish the Royal Academy of Arts.
He also greatly extended the Royal Collection
when he purchased Buckingham House for his bride, Princess
Charlotte.
George greatly extended the future palace
and filled it with art and the best in British design.
Despite struggling with his homework as a boy,
George was also passionate about physics, chemistry,
mathematics, and engineering, commissioning
some of the most sophisticated clocks,
barometers, and watches ever created.
He was also an avid collector of books, 65,000 of which
were later donated to the British Museum, where
a special room was purpose built for the collection in 1827.
George was also far from the simple ogre
of American propaganda when it came to religious toleration.
When a bill was proposed in parliament to limit
the licensing of Protestant dissenting preachers,
George warned that such a measure would not obtain his
sanction -- "there shall be no persecution in my reign."
Such actions led the Methodist leader, John Wesley,
to ask, "when will England ever have a better Prince?"
George also supported freedom of worship
for his Catholic subjects in Quebec,
much of the disquiet of American colonists.
He was less sympathetic though when
it came to the civil and political rights
of his Catholic subjects in Ireland.
When Prime Minister William Pitt proposed
the removal of restrictions on Catholic rights,
the King claimed to do so would violate his oath
to uphold the Protestant faith.
Catholic Emancipation was therefore delayed until 1829.
George also opposed the emancipation,
of an altogether different order, of enslaved Africans
While he accepted legislation in 1788, 1806, and 1807 that
regulated and then banned the trade in slaves, the King's
opposition to the abolition of slavery
itself helped ensure that emancipation could not
become a ministerial measure.
This denied it the weight of government support
despite Pitt being sympathetic to the cause,
delaying such an act until 1833.
George, clearly, was a more complex character
than he has often remembered.
His long reign undeniably saw the crown
exercise the still considerable power it retained.
But there is little evidence to suggest
the King's objective was absolute tyranny
at home or over the colonies.
While the war with revolutionary France
witnessed a government clamp down
on radicals calling for the reform of parliament,
George's popularity continued to grow.
Facing the threat of invasion, the King
was no longer seen as a constitutional liability but as
a bulwark against revolution.
This is clear to see in the celebrations that
marked George's golden Jubilee in October 1810,
the first royal event of this kind ever held
in the modern era, and a great popular success.
As Dr. Parissien concludes, George
grew into the role of father of his people
in a manner none of his continental rivals could boast.
His tragedy was that his mental illness prevented him
from enjoying the fruits of his success.
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