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  1760-1815; Part 2

1760-1815; Part 2

I am like poor Lear, but, thank God, I have no Regan, no Goneril, only three Cordelias"). Moreover, he had been brought up in great seclusion by his German mother, and suffered from an inability to see anybody's point of view but his own. Consequently he was ignorant and bigoted in his opinions, and self-confident and obstinate in upholding them; and it is melancholy to think that a monarch in many ways so estimable should have spent a long life, as has been said, in obstinately resisting measures which are now almost universally admitted to be good, and in supporting measures which are as universally admitted to be bad. To him, perhaps more than to anyone else, does Great Britain owe the loss of her American colonies, the failure to pacify Ireland, the delay of parliamentary reform, and the long continuance of the slave trade. Yet it must be remembered in his defence that the views which he held were those of the average Englishman of that day, and the blame must be shared by the king and his subjects alike. George came to the throne determined to govern as well as to reign. "George, be a king", were the words which his mother - accustomed to the despotism, benevolent or otherwise, of German princes - constantly repeated to him. And a real king George was determined to be. For such an attempt the time was opportune. Some distinguished men, such as Bolingbroke, had advocated during the reign of his predecessor that the monarchy should recover its lost power. The king could rely on the devoted support of the Tories, who were by this time completely reconciled to the Hanoverian dynasty (Burke said of the Tories on George Ill's accession: "They had changed their idol but preserved their idolatry"). And through places and pensions and secret service money he could influence many votes, whilst a body of people known as the "king's friends" were prepared in the House of Lords to act according to his wishes.

The king, however, found it difficult to get rid of the Whig oligarchy with their family connections and their long experience of government, and he had to depend largely upon its members to fill his ministries during the first few years of his reign. But the Whigs were divided among themselves, fighting, as a contemporary said, like High-land clans, for places and power, and George could change one Whig ministry for another without difficulty if it conflicted with his views. Consequently the ministries are of short duration, and during the first ten years of George III's reign there are no less than seven. Within a year of the king's accession the ministry which had conducted the Seven Years War with such glorious success came to an end. Pitt resigned, because his colleagues in the cabinet refused to go to war with Spain, and things were made so uncomfortable for Newcastle that he followed Pitt's example six months later (Most of the bishops had received their sees from Newcastle, and had been regular and obsequious attendants at his levees, but on his fall they thought it prudent to abstain from attending in the future". Even fathers in God", was Newcastle's comment", sometimes forget their Maker").

Chronology
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