GEORGE III. 



GEORGE III. 



60 



family. Though his Hanoverian partialities however occasioned con 

 siJerable outcry when the wars in which the country was engaged 

 were unfortunate, all thia was forgotten in the splendid successes 

 which at the close of his reign crowned the British arms both by sea 

 and land, and at the moment of his death George II. perhaps enjoyed 

 more popularity than any prince that had for a long period sat on the 

 English throne. Both morally and intellectually his character seems 

 to have very much resembled that of his father ; he is said to have 

 been somewhat passionate, but open, straightforward, and placable, 

 though apt to entertain antipathies of considerable obstinacy, as well 

 as steady in his attachment to those who had once attracted his 

 regard. The only study to which he had any partiality was the art of 

 war, in which he conceived himself to be a great adept. His queen 

 Caroline was a woman of considerable strength of character as well as 

 of cultivated mind, and as long as she lived she exercised great 

 influence over her husband. There was a succession of royal mis 

 italics however in this reign, as well as in the preceding. When 

 George II. was prince of Wales he fell or professed to fall violently in 

 love with the reigning beauty of the day, Mary, daughter of John, 

 lord Bellenden, who was one of the princess's maids of honour ; she 

 however rejected his proposals, and married Colonel Campbell, one of 

 the grooms of his bedchamber, who many years after became Duke of 

 Argyll. On thia the prince attached himself to Mrs. Howard, who 

 succeeded to her place in the household of his wife, and she long con- 

 tinued to hold notoriously the situation of the king's first female 

 favourite, though her influence, it is said, was never equal to that of 

 the queen. Another of the king's mistresses was Amelia Sophia de 

 Wahuoden, who in 1740 was created countess of Yarmouth for life 

 the last instance of thia scandalous abuse of the royal prerogative, 

 and prostitution of the honours of the state. 



Of the mass of legislation added to the Statue-book during this 

 reign no very large portion retains any importance at the present day. 

 Among the measures most deserving of notice may be mentioned, the 

 Act 4 Gi-o. II., c. 26, ordering that all proceedings in courts of justice 

 in England, and in the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, should be in 

 the English language (two years afterwards extended to Wales) ; the 

 8 Geo. II., c. 6, establishing a Registry of Conveyances, Wills, &c., in 

 the North Riding of Yorkshire; the 8 Geo. II., c. 13, which established 

 a copyright in engravings ; the 9 Geo. II., c. 5, repealing the old 

 statutes against witchcraft; the 10 Geo. II., c. 28, prohibiting the 

 acting of any new stage play without permission of the lord chamber- 

 lain (thia was occasioned by some theatrical ridicule directed against 

 Wai pole) ; the IS Geo. II., c. 15, separating the surgeons of London 

 from the barbers ; the 19 Geo. II., c. 39, entitled an Act for the more 

 effectual disarming of the Highlands in Scotland, and for restraining 

 the use of the Highland dress, &c. ; the 20 Geo. II., c. 30, allowing 

 persons impeached of high treason to make their full defence by 

 counsel ; the 20 Geo. II., c. 43, abolishing heritable jurisdictions in 

 Scotland ; the 20 Geo. II., c. 50, taking away the tenure of Ward- 

 holding in Scotland, and converting it into Blanch- and Feu-holdings ; 

 the 24 (ieo. II., c. 23, establishing the use of the New Style; the 

 26 Geo. II., o. 2, for purchasing the museum of Sir Hans Sloane and 

 the Harleian manuscripts, the foundation of the British Museum ; the 

 26 Geo. II., c. 26, being an act permitting Jews to be naturalised by 

 parliament without taking the sacrament, which however wan repealed 

 the following year; and the 26 Geo. II., c. 33, commonly called the 

 Marriage Act. 



The national debt was considerably more than doubled in the 

 course of this reign ; its amount at the conclusion of the Seven Years' 

 War, in 1763, was nearly 139,000,0001., paying an interest of above 

 4,850,0001. The annual parliamentary grants, which at the beginning 

 of the reign usually amounted to about three millions, or three 

 millions and a half, rose at ita close to twelve, fifteen, and at last to 

 nineteen million*. The country nevertheless undoubtedly made great 

 progress iu wealth and general improvement during the reign of 

 George II. Commerce and manufactures were greatly extended ; 

 both the useful arts and those that embellish life found a demand 

 and encouragement that waa constantly increasing ; and various 

 branches both of literature and science were cultivated with consider- 

 able ardour and success. 



>U(iK (WILLLIAM FREDERICK) lit, the eldest son of 

 Frederick Lewis, prince of Wales, waa born on the 4th of June 1738. 

 Hia mother waa Augusta, daughter of Frederick II., duke of Saxe 

 Got ha, born in 1719, married to the Prince of Walea on the 25th of 

 April 1736. Their other children were 1, Augusta, born 1737, 

 married in 1764 to Charles William Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick 

 Wolfenbiittel, died 1813; 3, Edward Augustus, born 1739, created 

 Duke of York 1760, died 1767 ; 4, Elizabeth Caroline, born 1741, died 

 1759; 5, VVillUm Henry, born 1743, created Dnke of Gloucester 1764, 

 died 1805 ; 6, Henry Frederick, born 1745, created Duke of Cumber- 

 land 1766, died 1790 ; 7, Louwa Anne, born 1749, died 1768 ; 8, Frede- 

 rick William, born 1750, died 1765 ; 9, Caroline Matilda, born 1751 

 (four months after her father's death), married to Christian VII., king 

 of Denmark, 1766, died 1774. 



On the death of his father on the 20th of March 1751, Prince George 

 BTiroeetl.il to the title of the Duke of Gloucester, but he waa created 

 Prince of Wales on the 20th of April. Hia mother, under whose care 

 he then remained, soon disengaged herself from, or was deserted by, 



BIOO. DIT. VOL. III. 



the leaders of the parliamentary opposition which had gathered around 

 and made a tool of her husband ; but the king's habitual dislike to 

 her appears never to have been overcome. It has been asserted that, 

 encouraged by the manner in which the princess was treated by the 

 rest of the royal family, the prince's governor, Lord Hareourt, and his 

 preceptor, Dr. Hayter, bishop of Norwich, exerted their influence to 

 prejudice him both against the old friends of his father and against his 

 mother herself. Another accouut is that the princess was prejudiced 

 against the governor and the preceptor by Lord Bute, who now became 

 her confidential adviser. [BUTE, EARL OF.] From whatever cause, 

 Lord Hareourt and the bishop resigned their places in December 1752 ; 

 the ground which they assigned was that Mr. Stone, the prince's sub- 

 governor (placed in that situation by the ministry), Mr. Scott, another 

 tutor (who had been recommended to the late prince by Lord Bpling- 

 brpke), and Mr. Cresset (who had been appointed treasurer of the 

 prince's household on the recommendation of his mother), were all 

 concealed Jacobites. Stone, it was affirmed, had about twenty years 

 before actually drunk the Pretender's health in public. This charge, 

 in which Dr. Johnson, bishop of Gloucester, and Mr. Murray, after- 

 wards the celebrated Lord Mansfield, were also involved, was made 

 the subject not only of an inquisition by the cabinet, but afterwards 

 of a debate in tte House of Lords. It appears to have rested on 

 little or no evidence, and the charge, in itself an abundantly ridiculous 

 one, wholly broke down under judicial investigation. Lord Waldegrave 

 was soon after appointed the prince's governor, and Dr. John Thomas, 

 bishop of Peterborough (afterwards of Salisbury, finally of Winchester), 

 his preceptor ; and under their management and the more influential 

 superintendence of Lord Bute, matters proceeded without further 

 dissension. The prince was kept by his mother in great privacy, and 

 permitted to associate only with a very small and select circle. Her 

 royal highness seems to have been actuated by good intentions ; she 

 was anxious to preserve her son from the contamination of the fashion- 

 able profligacy of the day; and in this respect her method may be 

 allowed to have been successful. But in regard to anything beyond 

 this, both her own notions and those of the persons in whose hands 

 she placed herself were narrow iu the extreme. One of her complaints 

 to Dodington against the Bishop of Norwich was that he insisted 

 upon teaching the prince and his brothers logic, " which, as she was 

 told, was a very odd study for children of their age, not to say of 

 their condition." Bute indeed appears to have felt the propriety of 

 some political instruction being given to the heir-apparent ; but his 

 lordship, although he soon after adventured upon the office of prime- 

 minister, had himself scarcely any practical acquaintance with political 

 matters, and had never made that department of knowledge his study. 

 Independently therefore of hia party prejudices, which gave him a 

 general bias towards what would now be called by most people anti- 

 quated and illiberal opiuions, he was from mere ignorance of the 

 subject a very unfit director of the political studies of the prince ; nor 

 were any of his coadjutors or subordinates much more competent. 

 Their pupil accordingly can scarcely be said to the end of hia life to 

 have mastered even the details and conventional forms of political 

 science. In 1759, when he had attained his majority, the prince took 

 his seat in the House of Peers ; but there is no record of his having 

 taken any part in the business of the House. 



George III. succeeded to the throne on the death of his grand- 

 father, October 25, 1760. Of his eventful reign of nearly sixty years 

 we can here attempt only a very rapid sketch. On the 8th of July 

 1761 the young king surprised his council by the unexpected announce- 

 ment of his intention to marry the Princess Charlotte Sophia, second 

 daughter of Charles Lewis Frederick, duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 

 The marriage took place on the 8th of September following. It is 

 understood that in determining upon this union the king had the 

 merit of pacrificing a private attachment to what were deemed con- 

 siderations of political expediency. Throughout his reign indeed he 

 never showed himself deficient in the strength of character necessary 

 to make everything else bend to what he held to be the demands of 

 hia public position. The youth and unblemished moral character of 

 George III., and the circumstance of his having been born in the 

 country, excited much popular regard and expectation on his accession 

 to the throne. From the first however he did not conceal his anxiety 

 for an end of the war which was then urged with so much national 

 enthusiasm. Lord Bute, who had immediately on the commencement 

 of the reign been admitted into the privy council, and made groom of 

 the stole, was in a few months brought into the ministry, with the 

 design probably of effecting that object He was made secretary of 

 state in March 1761. In the beginning of the following October Mr. 

 Pitt resigned, on finding himself opposed by a majority of the cabinet 

 when he proposed to anticipate the designs of Spain by declaring war 

 Mg.iu-t that power. The war with Spain, which he had predicted as 

 inevitable, broke out in January 1762 : but in the beginning of June 

 Bute became premier on the resignation of tho Duke of Newcastle ; 

 and on the 3rd of November the preliminaries of peace between 

 France and England were signed at Fontainebleau. By the treaty of 

 Paris, concluded 10th of February 17G3, between Great Britain, France, 

 Spain, and Portugal, this country retained possession of Canada, 

 acquired Florida by cession from Spain, and recovered Minorca, but 

 gave up Belleisle, the Havannah, and all the settlements taken from 

 France in the Eait Indies. An attempt was made by the opposition 



