George III was a custodial not a tyrannical monarch, demonstrating a principled constitutionality and remaining above faction without undermining those in power. Initially unpopular and enduring a series of irresolute or unprepared prime ministers, during the French Revolutionary era he showed himself determined and muchly helpful to Pitt the Younger’s success. The recasting of the British monarchy as constitutional head of state commenced with him, not Victoria.
George’s education was superior to public schooling but reclusive. He learned to value the balanced constitution while developing lifelong hostility to Whig oligopoly. Self-denying for the sake of country, he was the first Hanover to see himself as primarily British. He was kindly and at ease among the populace; many less flattering characteristics aspects of his character are attributable to the salacious Horace Walpole, an entertaining but often misleading diarist.
Just prior to reaching his majority, Parliament entered the Seven Years War having sacked Pitt the Elder, its best strategist, in favor of the corrupt Henry Fox. (George II, though conscious of his rights, did so at the Duke of Cumberland’s urging; he merely agreed with the Old Whigs.) Bute’s tutelage of George was held against his ministry, and the king was at first seen as grasping both by contemporaries and historians, wrongly in Roberts’ view.
At the French war’s denouement, Bute ceded the sugar island Guadeloupe, after having instead considered Canada on grounds that French pressure would have kept the American colonies loyal to Britain. Once safe, economic matters were a pretext for the real issue of self-government. Bute and Blackstone’s Commentaries (1765) fashioned George’s opinion that American claims to self-government had no standing in English law. In addition to the strategic error of tethering the Americans to the Atlantic seaboard (the Proclamation of 1763), this conservative view propelled Britain toward losing the colonies.
George tended to appoint prime ministers and leave them to legislate and execute, notwithstanding the unwonted predominance of the Grenvilles (George and his brother Richard Temple) and the Pitts (the elder being married to Temple’s sister). The Stamp Act was Grenville’s responsibility, and having insisted on dismissing Stuart-Mackenzie as Lord Privy Seal of Scotland, forcing George to break a promise, Grenville alienated George to the family for making him subject to factional interests. Lasting but two months, Grenville was replaced by Rockingham, who had never sat in Commons nor anyone else’s cabinet. Contra Conor Cruise O’Brien, on his return Pitt the Elder (now Lord Chatham) was given more scope than Rockingham, one of several occasions on which Roberts disagrees with the Irish historian. Later the sons of Pitt and Grenville would become PMs, indicating George’s essential forbearance.
In the years following the Stamp Act’s repeal, George contended with keeping Grenville out as PM, Wilkes out of the Commons, Parliamentary review of royal finances and appointments, and France out of the West Indies. Historians who contend George tried to gather power ignore the politicians who wished to avoid responsibility – including Lord North, who had otherwise ended the merry go round. Relatedly, contemporary European governments often resorted to genuine tyranny (e.g., mass arrests, execution of civilians without trial) whereas there had been arrests at all following the Boston Tea Party. George behaved with constitutional propriety during the American unrest, going along with hawkish ministries (admittedly to his liking) rather than driving policy. Of the 28 charges laid against George in the Declaration of Independence, only 2, regarding taxation and parliamentary authority to legislate for the colonists, are logical.
In post facto war gaming, the UK wins the war 45 percent of the time. Even as the war deteriorated, George, stepping back from hopes of an outright win, was determined to hold Canada, Nova Scotia, and Florida. The stakes were more patriotic than economic: circa 1776, imports from the British Windies totaled £4.5 million, versus 1.5 million from India, while the Americans were far below.
1779 marked existential danger for Britain. A French fleet of 63 ships and 30,000 regulars gained control of the English Channel. George showed a decisiveness that North lacked, pressing for attack in the Windies, Gibraltar, and Minorca, recognizing that France and Spain’s joining the war converted the conflict from a domestic question of Parliament’s constitutional rights in the colonies to the UK’s survival as a great power. Colonial possessions had to be defended, even at the risk of the homeland’s invasion, because of the sugar islands’ revenue. However, he was less clear sighted about responsibilities for the American war’s military losses. (NB: ‘Hessians’ werer from several small principalities, representing one-third of the soldiery. Not mercenaries, they were paid by the German states. Though effective they made for poor propaganda, especially during the New Jersey winter of 1777-78.)
Though not ignoring the denouement, Roberts’ current thus turns toward domestic matters. Thinking George a moderate, he is generally unsympathetic to Burke, described as a ‘radical Whig’ (e.g., pp. 417, 445, 486, 490). Pitt on Burke: ‘much to admire, nothing to agree with’ (p. 526). Irish repeal of the Declaratory Act demonstrates Westminster had learned from America, rather panic in the Rockingham administration. Whig attempts to arrogate East India Company patronage to Parliament in 1778 seemed an oligarchical revival to George; parallels to the Whigs’ 1766’s repeal of the Stamp Act make them seem hypocritical.
1784’s dismissal of the Fox-North coalition stemmed from the East India Bill, and was quite constitutional of George. The subsequent election, a hotly contested affair which produced ‘Fox’s martyrs’, indicated that the Whig leader had overplayed his hand regarding East India, the loss of America, and near-republican critique of the monarch. Pitt’s rout result in George’s having a genuine ally for the first time, at time when the king could still have his choice of ministers. Had he died in 1783, he might have been lumped together with his Hanoverian predecessors; but instead he and Pitt saw off the French revolutionaries and Bonaparte. By 1792, Pitt as PM was no longer immediately responsible to the king, but to Parliament; he, Dundas, and Grenville were a united front in dealing with the monarch; Addington extended the trend. Pitt’s success was muchly due to George’s support.
As when recovering from illness, so with the initial period of the Revolutionary wars. Evident homeliness, piety, and commitment to national victory established his bona fides. Whereas during the American revolution George’s principled stance was unhelpful, in the French wars it was invaluable. Ironically, he traveled little, never visiting Scotland, Wales, or Ireland; nor Hanover; nor the American colonies or Windies. Indeed, did he travel north of Worcester or west of Plymouth. He never went to see the newly industrializing Manchester, Birmingham, or Leeds.
In Ireland, George supported toleration of the Catholic Church but not equality, for he was head of the Church of England (and of Ireland), and so was unhappy with the Earl of Fitzwilliam’s concessions. His successor, Earl of Camden, confiscated 50,000 muskets and 70,000 pikes – indicative of 1798. Neoclassical architecture, already underway, reached its apogee during his reign as he frequently paid interest in public projects.
(NB: amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.)
(NB: as an insult, a XXX husband, rather than not remarry, should as condign punishment marry the devil’s daughter. The riposte: the law prohibited marrying one’s deceased wife’s sister – p. 407)
Revolutionary War
8. Morgan, Birth of the Republic, 1763-89 (27 Apr 2016)
Surveys the Revolutionary War era, demonstrating America’s founding is a product of shared search for principles of civic equality and justice. As with Burkean or Whig historians, Morgan argues for a revolution not made but preserved; this effort covers the details of articulating protest, organizing around the colonies’ common political views, and ultimately framing the American Constitution. The work’s eloquence lies in persuasively tying emergent principles to facts on the ground. A 21st-century analysis would hit harder at the moral failure to dispose of slavery — but then most latter-day treatments pettifog in ways which Morgan surmounts. Interestingly, the author contends the Articles of Confederation were not quite as dire as commonly held, and ties the Bill of Rights to the Constitution’s adoption by the states as a quid pro quo.
18. Morgan, Genuine Article (23 Oct 2018)
A collection of book reviews treating Colonial and Revolutionary era topics, often revealing the author’s views of 1980s-90s historiographic fashion. Following Perry Miller, Morgan asserts the value of taking people (i.e., evidence) at their word; socioeconomic approaches are disparaged in that ‘hidden meanings’ can’t be interrogated and so tend to reveal what the historian is looking for’; reliance on statistics for obscuring the big picture, a la Lewis Namier’s structure of politics. Whereas the main value of written evidence is the ability to show changes in how people thought about themselves. As to the 18th century, Morgan sides with the thesis that the America’s was a revolution was not made but preserved. He writes the position of the revolutionaries was to trust men in power no more than necessary: the crowd (‘the mob’) held the same mistrust of Parliament and colonial governors, who were gaining in power as the century went on – notwithstanding the efforts of neo-Marxist historians to find an independent, class agenda. In separate essays, written at different times, he appears of two minds regarding the political position of the Antifederalists and also the legitimacy of popular sovereignty. John Winthrop is convincingly portrayed as pragmatic, the ‘first great American’, for leading the quasi-surreptitious transformation of the English joint stock company into a colonial charter for Puritans. The Puritans’ devolution of sexual morality to civic government is the first sexual revolution. Franklin is like Burke albeit quicker to recognize to the breach with England was irreparable; Hutchinson a man of Burkean principle who nonetheless ended a simple apologist for power. (In an aside, Morgan shows how absolute right was converted to parliamentary sovereignty: from the king can do no wrong to the king wants what is right; what we want is right; the king must want what we want.) The essay on Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution is strong. Those on Southern culture are learned but less gripping, perhaps because of the topics; as Morgan notes, the South became self-conscious of its culture only after it lay in the ruins of the Civil War. The co-authored essay on a successor to the Dictionary of American Biography is poor. Generally crisp and learned, yet Morgan often accommodates contemporary, fashionable liberalism.
13. Wood, American Revolution (13 August 2021)
Surveys American society, economy, and politics during the Revolutionary era, 1760-90. Following victory over the French, settlers hurtled into the eastern Mississippi River valley in search of land. Those remaining on the Eastern seaboard resented with British efforts to make the colonies pay for war costs, continuing defense, and government. In 1764 the Sugar Act attempted to curb smuggling while the Currency Act prohibited paper currencies; the following year the Stamp Act levied s transaction tax, setting in motion protests of ‘no taxation without representation’. By that time, some 4,000 British troops (from Ireland) were billeted among Boston’s 15,000 population. By decade’s end, open sedition commenced in Massachusetts, the Boston Massacre occurring in 1770. (The ‘Intolerable Acts’ and the Quebec Act, which seemed to give control of the western trade to French Catholics, followed in 1774.) Colonists had long identified with English ‘country’ sentiments as well as Whiggish views of the overbearing George III. They set to refashioning state constitutions, elevating the legislatures; but the British could not reconcile any challenge to Westminster’s sovereignty. Following military victory, republicanism intensified the country ideology: equality of citizenry (e.g., all could own property, vote, or serve in the legislature) combined with Humean sensibilities (degrading learning in favor of common opinion) and neoclassical cultural spirit overwhelmed established American elites. The shift destabilized views of family (e.g., inheritance or women’s roles) and slavery. Methodists and Baptists caught up to Anglicans and Presbyterians by 1790; elites being deist, upstart religions filled the void. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was Confederation America’s finest moment, enabling settlers to migrate without losing political rights; the peace treaty a splendid diplomatic accomplishment, persuading both Britain and France to concede more of the West than they might have. The new country took land from Indians by right of conquest. Following independence, internal markets fueled economic gains – Newport, RI, exemplified a port city which fell behind. The new constitution was prompted by economic shortcomings, overbearing state legislatures, and foreign policy problems such as in the Northwest. In contrast with the British view of sovereignty residing in Parliament, the Americans located it in the people, and so hadn’t to recover it from the states. The people could endorse the new charter in super-legislative act which established the two tier (federal and state) system.