in. 



OEOROR III. 



to excite dissatisfaction with thii treaty, bat it was not very sucoen- 

 fuL Bute however resigned on the 8th of April, not so much, it 

 would appear, in consequence cither of any opposition in parliament 

 or any unpopularity out of doom, a* from want of support in the 

 cabinet. Ho wa* succeeded by Mr. George Grenville, who was for 

 some time however generally looked upon as merely the lieutenant of 

 the retired minister. Mr. Oreinille'a administration commenced 

 ominously with the famous contest with Wilkes, ariaing out of the 

 publication of the forty-fifth number of his ' North Briton,' on the 

 19th of April This business, and the question of general warrants 

 which was involved in it, occupied much of the early part of the 

 following seaaion of parliament The close, .of the same session in 

 April 1784, was made memorable by the passing of the first resolu- 

 lutious asserting the expediency of imposing certain stamp-duties upon 

 the colonies in America. A bill actually imposing such duties was 

 brought forward the next session, and received the royal assent 

 March 22, 1785. 



In the meantime however various circumstances had concurred to 

 shake the ministry. In the preceding April the king had been 

 attacked by an illness penerally supposed to have been the same 

 menial malady with which he was afterwards visited oftener than 

 once in a more serious form. On his recovery, which took place in a 

 few weeks, he proposed that a bill should be brought into parliament 

 empowering him to appoint the queen or any other member of the 

 rojal family to act, in case of his demise, as regent during the 

 minority of his successor. The real author of this proposition was, 

 no doubt, Lord Bute. The ministers had of late attempted to throw 

 off his lordship, but on this occasion they did not venture openly to 

 oppose the king's wish ; they only attempted, when the bill was on 

 its way through parliament, to exclude from it the name of the 

 Princess Dowager of Wales. In this however they were signally 

 defeated ; a motion having been made in the Commons that the name 

 of the princess should be inserted, the influence of the court and of 

 Lord Bute were sufficient to carry it against ministers by the large 

 majority of 167 to 37. The rising discontents in America came soon 

 after, still further to embarrass Mr. Grenville and his colleagues. It 

 was not however till after a great deal of negociation that the king 

 found himself strong enough to give them their dismissal. 



At last, on the 10th of July 1765, a new ministry was formed, with 

 the Marquis of Kockingham at its head. This ministry, though not 

 without considerable hesitation, repealed the American Stamp Act; 

 the bill to that effect received the royal assent on March 20th 1766, 

 and for the present this measure effectually allayed the disturbances 

 in the colonies. The Rockingham ministry however soon came to an 

 end, partly from inadequate support in parliament, partly from the 

 lukewarmness of the court, but chiefly from internal dissensions, if 

 not treachery in some of its members. Soon after the prorogation of 

 parliament in the beginning of June, Mr. Pitt was sent for by the 

 king; and by the beginning of August that gentleman, transferred to 

 the House of Lords with the title of Karl of Chatham, was at the head 

 of a new cabinet. It was during this administration that on the 2nd 

 of June 1767 Mr. C. Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, 

 brought forward that renewed measure of American taxation which 

 eventually led to the independence of the colonies. This is believed 

 to have been Mr. Townshend's own scheme, Lord Chatham, though 

 still the nominal head of the cabinet, being now in such a state of 

 health, and so much at variance with the majority of his colleagues, 

 that it is said he was never even consulted in the matter. Mr. 

 Townshend died suddenly on the 4th of September, on which Lord 

 North was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, and the ministry 

 from this time came to be generally known as that of the Duke of 

 Orafton, who held the office of first lord of the treasury. Lord Chatham 

 at last resigned, October 15tb, 1768. With the meeting of parliament 

 in the preceding June commenced the second and much more pro- 

 tracted struggle of the government with Wilkeg, occasioned by his return 

 for Middlesex, his expulsion by the house, and his repeated re-election. 

 Meanwhile, the new plan of colonial taxation had thrown all English 

 America into commotion as soon as it was announced. The beginning 

 of the next year, 1769, was distinguished by the appearance of the first 

 of the celebrated ' Letters of Junius,' the most effective series of 

 political attacks ever directed against a ministry. The Duke of 

 Grafton, the object of the most envenomed shafts of this invisible 

 assailant, suddenly resigned, January 28th 1770. On this Lord North 

 became premier, and began his administration with a bill, brought in 

 March 5, for the repeal of all the lately-imposed American duties, 

 except the duty on tea, which was retained avowedly merely to assert 

 the right of taxation. This exception however produced the war with 

 the colonies, and their eventual separation. A dispute with Spain 

 about the possession of the Falkland Islands occupied attention for a 

 short time in the latter part of this year, but was eventually adjusted 

 without leading to hostilities. The session of parliament which termi- 

 nated on May 8th 1771 is memorable for the successful assertion by 

 the newspaper press of the right of reporting tho debates, after a 

 context with the House of Commons which lasted from tho beginning 

 of February to the end of April, and for two months of that time 

 almost wholly occupied the house. This and the following year were 

 also marked by tome important events in the royal family. In the 

 summer of 1771 the king's third brother, the Duke of Cumberland, 



married Mrs. Ilorton, daughter of Lord Irnham (afterwards Karl of 

 Carbarn pton), and widow of Christopher Ilorton, Esq. His majesty, 

 as soon as the affair was publicly announced, forbade the duke aud 

 duchess to appear at court; but this did not deter his second brother, 

 the Duke of Gloucester, from avowing, a month or two afterwards, 

 iis marriage with the Countess-Dowager of Waldegrave (daughter of 

 Sir Edward Walpole), which had taken place six years before. The 

 lloyal Marriage Bill was in consequence brought into the House of 

 Lords, and, notwithstanding a strenuous opposition, passed into a law. 

 By this statute (12Geo. IIL c. 11) all descendants of George II. (except 

 the issue of princesses married into foreign families) are prohibited, 

 while under the age of twenty-five, from contracting marriage without 

 tho consent of the king, and without the consent of parliament if above 

 that age. The king's mother, the Princess-Dowager of Wales, died on 

 the 8th of February 1772. Only a few days before had occurred at 

 Copenhagen the catastrophe of the king's youngest sister, the Queen 

 of Denmark, who was suddenly thrown into confinement, by order of 

 her imbecile and dissolute husband, on a charge of adultery with his 

 physician Struensee. No proof of the criminality of the parties ever 

 was produced, though both Struensee and his friend Brandt were put 

 to death without trial. The queen was sent in the first instance to 

 the castle of Cronsbnrg ; but after being confined there for about four 

 months the interposition of her brother procured her release, and she 

 was conveyed first to Stade and afterwards to Zell in Hanover, where 

 she lived in retirement till her death, May 10th 1774. 



The disturbances in America, excited by the tea duty, broke out in 

 the summer of 1773. The Gasp<S schooner was attacked and burned 

 at Providence, in Rhode Island, in June ; tbo destruction of the tea 

 by the mob at Boston took place in December. Another year however 

 was spent before the quarrel assumed the character of a regular contest 

 of arms. Hostilities commenced with the battle of Lexington, April 

 19th 1775; that of Bunker's Hill followed on the 16th of June. Still 

 the resistance of the colonists had not taken the form of an avowed 

 determination to throw off the dominion of the mother-country. It 

 was not till the ever-memorable 4th of July 1776 that the contest was 

 brought to this point by tbe Declaration of Independence. In the 

 course of the next year many French officers joined the Americans, 

 and it became evident that the governments both of France and of 

 Spain were about to take part publicly with the revolted colonies. 

 Meanwhile, on the 16th of October, the convention of Saratoga, and 

 the surrender of Uurgoyne, inflicted the first great blow upon the 

 British cause. On the 6th of February 1778 a treaty was signed 

 between the Americans and France, in which their independence was 

 acknowledged. War between England and France of course immedi- 

 ately followed this act In June 1779 Spain too at last openly joined 

 the hostile confederacy ; and before the end of another year England 

 had found still another enemy in Holland. The convention of the 

 northern powers of Russia, Denmark, and Sweden (soon after joined 

 by Holland, Prussia, aud the Emperor), for the maintenance of what 

 was called the armed neutrality being in fact a defiance of the power 

 of Great Britain to enforce the commonly-recognised rights of belli- 

 gerents was also established in tho course of the year 1780. At home 

 this was the year of the Protestant riots, when London was for nearly 

 a week in the hands of a devastating mob, which was not put down 

 till after a great effusion of blood, as well as destruction of property. 

 The popular mind in Ireland moreover was in a state which occasioned 

 the greatest alarm : the inhabitants were embodied as volunteers to 

 the number of fifty or sixty thousand, and the British parliament h;ul 

 already in the beginning of this year been compelled to yield to some, 

 and was soon to be forced to concede more, of the demands of these 

 petitioners with arms hi their hands. 



Meanwhile the nation was becoming heartily tired of tbe war ; and 

 the ministry, surrounded by so many embarrassments, stood at the 

 lowest point of unpopularity. These feelings continued to increase in 

 the public mind as new failures and calamities further demonstrated 

 tho incapacity, or the ill fortune, with which the affairs of the country 

 were conducted. Even in the East, where the French had at the 

 commencement of the war been again driven from all their settlements, 

 the successes of Hyder Ali now seemed to be fast changing the face of 

 affairs. In America the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, on 

 the 19th of October 1781, in effect terminated the struggle. Lord North 

 and his colleagues resigned on the 20th of March 1782, on which the 

 Marquis of Rockingham was once more placed at the head of a new 

 ministry ; but his death about three months after his acceptance of 

 office again overthrew all the arrangements that had been made. Lord 

 Shelburno having succeeded to tbe place of first lord of tbe treasury 

 and premier, Mr. Fox and all his friends immediately resigned. 

 Among the new appointments WHS that of Mr. J'itt to the office of 

 chancellor of the exchequer, in the room of Lord George Cavendish. 

 It is said to have been by the persuasions of Lord Shelburne that the 

 king was at last, after extreme reluctance, prevailed upon to consent 

 to acknowledge the independence of the colonies. The preliminaries 

 of a peace were signed at Paris on the basis of that acknowledgment 

 on the 30th of November, and on the 3rd of September 1783 the war, 

 which had resulted in so large a curtailment of the dominions of tho 

 British crown, was formally brought to a close by the signature of 

 definitive treaties with America, Franco, and Spain. Peace with 

 Holland was also concluded at Paris, June 20th, 1784. 



