King George III never fully recovered—politically or personally—from the loss of the American colonies. He brooded over the loss of the colonies for many years and fell out of favor with the British public for extending the war. Yet, in , he was able to turn disaster into triumph at home when he opposed a plan by powerful ministers in Parliament to reform the East India Company.
He let it be known that any minister who supported this plan would become his enemy. The bill was ultimately defeated, and King George regained some of his popularity with the British people as a result. In , however, the king experienced an episode of insanity, believed to be caused by a genetic disease, porphyria, though some historians dispute this diagnosis.
Feeble and blind, it was apparent that the king could no longer fulfill his duties. Parliament passed the Regency Act and, ultimately, the fate of the empire fell on his oldest son, Prince George, who was placed in the unenviable position of having to govern according to the increasingly erratic will of his father. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Gerald Ford became the 38th president of the United States following Richard Nixon's resignation, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
He was succeeded by Queen Elizabeth II in Charles II was the monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland during much of the latter half of the 17th century, marking the Restoration era. He was married to Marie Antoinette and was executed for treason by guillotine in He abdicated the throne in order to marry his lover, Wallis Simpson, thereafter taking the title Duke of Windsor. The series made him a household name, but brought an end to his film career.
In , a skirmish at Fort Duquesne involving the Virginian George Washington sparked the conflict along the frontier in North America. But the more serious challenge to Britain came in the form of the European alliance. Strategically, Britain leaned on the tried and tested tactic of relying on the land armies of continental European allies to do the bulk of the fighting, while the vastly superior Royal Navy would bottle up the ports of the adversary with crippling blockades.
In spite of Prussian military prowess, Frederick had his hands full, as the Austrians, Russians and French had the Prussians vastly outnumbered. Having superior land forces at their disposal on the continent, and with an exposed eastern frontier, French commanders maintained a massive army on the home front to protect against hostile European powers. So instead, British commanders concentrated their armies in the North American theatre.
While the British Amy ultimately proved successful in the French and Indian War, by , Prussia was on the brink of collapse. To make matters worse, in , French military strategists shifted their gaze from the continent to the British Isles. They amassed nearly , troops—an overwhelming force— in preparation for an invasion of Britain.
French commanders planned to wait for a strong wind so they could quickly maneuver around the superior Royal Navy stationed in the English Channel. Fortunately for the British Army, the plan never hatched. If the French made it across the Channel, they would have quickly outmaneuvered British forces, and ended the war in favor of France and her allies.
While this disaster was averted, it would not be the last time the French seriously considered an amphibious invasion of England. In spite of this, success in North America left Great Britain in a dominant position by the end of the war.
This left the British Empire with vast territorial acquisitions in North America that had to be governed and defended against future aggressors. His lineage hailed from the House of Hanover in modern day Germany. While there were several Catholics who had a stronger blood connection to Queen Anne, the Act of Settlement in prohibited Catholics from assuming the throne. From the early years of his inheritance, George I faced an underground movement that wished to restore the Stuart monarchical line which had been deposed during the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution.
Supporters of the Stuart line referred to themselves as Jacobites, and the more radical elements of this movement wished to rekindle the flames of the English Civil War by reversing the tide of anti-Catholic sentiment. In , and again in , the Jacobites rebelled against the authority of the House of Hanover.
But Catholic resentment simmered beneath the surface well into the eighteenth century. While there were English subjects who were dissatisfied with the Hanoverian monarchy, their grievances would advance from the religious to the secular realm. By the end of the seventeenth century, European philosophers were positing new, radical ideas on government. The Second Treatise was the most alarming to those kings who still clung to the concept of absolute monarchy.
This laid the bedrock for the Enlightenment which followed, as philosophes of the eighteenth century took the social contract to new heights. The Enlightenment redefined the relationship between subjects and their rulers. The Encyclopide , edited by Denis Diderot, advanced the claims of Locke, as many of the articles were aimed at advancing the theory of natural rights.
The theory implied that ancient ancestors had at one point or another entered a social contract with a monarch. In other words, to join society, the individual was forced to sacrifice liberties in order to enjoy the full privileges society had to offer. Locke referred to this as the state of nature, arguing that all men are created equal by God. With regard to the social contract, Locke asserted that subjects of a king possessed the right to rebel if the State was not governed according to the consent of the people.
These ideas from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were truly revolutionary, and throughout his reign, King George III would have to grapple with the realization of Enlightenment ideals. American colonists drew from Locke in their justifications for rebelling against the mother country, and establishing a republic in the wake of royal authority.
Less than a decade following American independence, French citizens would draw on the concepts advanced by philosophes such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu to rebel against their royal government.
The belief that all subjects possessed natural rights, and that a social contract defined their relationship to the king provided eighteenth century citizens with the intellectual fodder for revolution.
For this, Bute was mistrusted by Parliament and the people of England. On April 23, , Wilkes published no. For this, Wilkes was imprisoned for libel, and when Wilkes attempted to reprint the issue he was forced into exile, leaving for France in Bute could not take the pressure, and due to widespread public criticism, he resigned in Since Bute introduced the unpopular Cider Tax in England; Grenville instead looked to raise revenue from abroad.
The North American colonies were an untapped source of funds—colonial legislatures only raised taxes locally to support provincial governments.
Moreover, the average colonist only paid six pence in taxes per year compared with the yearly contribution of twenty five schillings from an average English taxpayer. Without much debate, the Sugar Act was passed through Parliament in as an improvement on the Molasses Act of The Sugar Act reduced the tax of the Molasses Act from six pence per gallon, to three pence per gallon.
By reducing the tax by half, Grenville believed the new act would reduce smuggling, and generate more revenue from the colonies. Instead, it did the opposite. The tax hit colonists during a period of economic recession, and while the tax was indirect, it was still felt by distilleries throughout North America.
In flagrant violation of the Sugar Act, colonial merchants continued to smuggle molasses into the North American colonies from other parts of the world. Following close on the heels of the Sugar Act was the passage of the Stamp Act in Printed goods such as legal documents, newspapers and pamphlets required a stamp in order to be valid.
The King supported the passage of the Stamp Act, as did the general public. It seemed like an obvious solution: the colonies needed the British Army to protect them from their adversaries, and therefore the colonists should pay to support the British regulars stationed on the continent. Even British newspapers made little, if any mention of the Stamp Act. In the North American colonies, news of the impending Stamp Act was met with violence.
In Boston, leaders of the Loyal Nine encouraged a mob to destroy property belonging to government officials. By noon that day, Ebenezer Mackintosh led the mob to a warehouse owned by Oliver. Later that day, the effigy of Oliver was burned in a bonfire atop Fort Hill, and shortly after, the mob attacked the residence of Andrew Oliver, not quitting until the early morning hours of August Two weeks later, the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson met the same fate.
In England, King George and Parliament faced opposition from government officials. It seemed impractical to collect revenue from a land over three thousand miles distant. In North America, colonists compared King George to Charles I for indiscriminately taxing the colonies without their consent. The implication was made by both parties that Britain could not keep the North American colonies in submission for much longer.
As the protests in North America intensified, Parliament continued to assert its authority over the colonies. In , Lord Charles Townshend proposed to tax the colonies indirectly by placing a duty on goods such as lead, paint, glass, lead and tea. King George sanctioned the Act by royal assent on June 29, with barely a murmur of dissent in Parliament. John Wilkes, the rogue publisher of the North Briton , became the de facto leader of early Parliamentary reformers.
After returning to England from exile, John Wilkes was again imprisoned for publishing an article in the North Briton which slandered the King. As a result of his imprisonment, riots ensued in Britain. On May 10, , British troops intervened by first reading the Riot Act to the mob assembled, and then the soldiers proceeded to shoot and kill six people.
The event became known as the Massacre of St. In , a new wave of riots erupted with the passage of the Papists Act. Enacted in , the act addressed the persecution of British Catholics that was officially sanctioned by the Popery Act of In , Lord Gordon was granted an audience, and attempted to convince the king that the act would be destructive to his government, but King George was not persuaded.
As Gordon presented the petition to the House of Commons, outside the Houses of Parliament, the ranks of the mob swelled and the protests turned violent. Members from the House of Lords, who were just arriving to take their seats in Parliament, were harassed and even physically assaulted as they tried to wade through the belligerent crowd. The next day on June 3, the mob gathered again at Moorfields where they prepared for their next riot.
That night, they attacked Newgate Prison and the Clink; allowing several inmates to escape and join the riots. The mob also vandalized the homes of several prominent Catholics and Catholic churches.
By June 7, the mob was still sporadically rampaging when the British Army was summoned to quell the disturbance. War began in and was prolonged in , at the king's insistence, to prevent copycat protests elsewhere. The British defeat in prompted North to resign. In , North and the prominent Whig politician Fox formed a coalition government.
Their plans to reform the East India Company gave George the chance to regain popularity. He forced the bill's defeat in Parliament, and the two resigned. In their place George appointed William Pitt the Younger. The combination of Pitt's skill and war with France in strengthened George's position, but disagreements over emancipation of the Catholics - Pitt was in favour and George vehemently opposed - led to Pitt's resignation in The American war, its political aftermath and family quarrels put great strain on George.
After serious bouts of illness in - and , thought now to be caused by porphyria, he became permanently deranged in George remained ill until his death at Windsor Castle on 29 January
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