- I'm Alice Loxton, and I present documentaries
over on History Hit TV. If you're passionate about
all things royal history, sign up to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix, but just for history. You've got hours of ad free documentaries about all aspects of the past. You can get a huge discount for History Hit TV. Make sure you check out the details in the video description and use the code RealRoyalty, all one word, when you sign up. Now on with a show. (gentle music) (light classical music) - [Robert] This astonishingly
lifelike portrait of King George III was molded in wax by the famous Madame
Tussaud two centuries ago. The year was 1809 and the King was about to
mark his golden jubilee. Soon afterwards he would
vanish from public life, the King who went mad. Yet, George III reigned longer than any King in British history through tumultuous change. He was the last King of America, and the first of Australia. On his watch the United Kingdom and its flag were created
and Napoleon defeated. He was a great collector, a champion of science, art, and music, especially his beloved Handel. His reign ushered in the
Industrial Revolution. His political battles helped
shape the monarchy today. We have Buckingham Palace thanks to him, and all the while he was writing, writing. Now for the first time
George III's private papers are being opened up for anyone to see. We can all discover a man whose devotion to his family and his coronation oath not only drove him but at times overwhelmed him. (majestic choral music) That manic monarch, so hauntingly captured by Madame Tussaud, can finally be revealed. (majestic choral music) (birds chirping) (gentle idyllic music) George III was halfway through his reign when his first bout of
mental illness began. It lasted four months, and then he wrote fondly to his wife Queen Charlotte. - [George III] My dearest Charlotte, I cannot but be deeply impressed by the consideration of how much you must have been affected by the long continuance of my illness. - [Robert] His remarkable and lucid words show how aware he was
of his own predicament, a King desperate to avoid
the family arguments that could trigger a repeat. - [George III] Though I
do not mean to decline giving that attention to public business which may be necessary, yet, I propose avoiding all discussions that may in their nature agitate me, and consequently must, for the present, decline entering on subjects that are not necessarily before me. I shall ever remain, my dearest Charlotte, your most affectionate husband George R. - [Robert] This poignant
and surprising letter has remained buried for 200 years. Now it is just one piece of a fascinating new historical jigsaw. (suspenseful violin music) Windsor Castle is the treasure
chest of royal secrets. Here in the Round Tower
are the personal papers of all British monarchs
and their families, from George III right
down to Elizabeth II. They've always been out of bounds, except to a few select historians. - Documents that really
you're wanting to keep forever you think about a strong
place to put them, and in the case of Windsor Castle, the very strongest place to put them is inside the Round Tower. The Round Tower is built on the site where William the Conqueror
founded the castle in 1070. The outside walls of the Round Tower were built in the mid-12th century so a very sensible and very
secure place to keep papers. - [Robert] Nowhere safer? - Nowhere safer. (dramatic violin music) - What's happening here at the top of these 104 stone steps is history of sorts too. Nearly two centuries
after George III's death, all his private papers, hundreds of thousands of them, are being released to the world. Now some may ask why has it taken so long? But here in this fortified royal vault, it's groundbreaking. (dramatic violin music) Never before has a group of academics been allowed inside the inner sanctum to rifle through these
invaluable documents. So the first visit of scholars from King's College London,
partners in this project, was a kind of royal revolution. - If you could break yourselves into groups or four.
- Coats are over here. - Three or four for each table. - Let's go I think that's us. - [Woman] Can we sit down? - [Woman] Yes, please do. - I'll go for 1780 and 26th too. - Are we allowed to actually-- - Oh, absolutely.
- Fondle them. - I think that's the idea, don't you? - Look there. Turbot lobsters and shrimp. - Exactly and a John Dory. In the second course we've got some impressive roasted poultry starting with a peafowl. He seems quite fond of the peacock too. (people chatting) - You know when you look at an archive that was a piece of paper held by the person who wrote it, and it was their passions, their views on the world, their troubles, their difficulties, and their successes as well, and that's what makes
seeing original documents so exciting and so compelling. - Oh, here you can see it there. You can see there. - [Robert] George's great collection covers not just the King but the Queen and all their children. I understand you've made an
interesting discovery already. I wonder if I could
just ask you about that? - Well, it's rather a heart-rending one. It's a short note from Queen Charlotte to Lady Charlotte Finch, the governess, with a little paper included. Just labeled, "Prince Alfred's
haircut during his..." - Illness?
- Mm-hmm, 1782. At the Lower Lodge I think Windsor, and then a lock of Prince Alfred, Little Prince Alfred who died, a little golden lock of
his hair sewn into it something for her to remember him by and thanking her for looking after him. - What does it feel like to
come across something like this when you've just arrived
here in the archives? - I mean it's incredibly touching, but actually it's rather
shocking how bright and shiny and now this lock of hair looks. You know, it could just have
been cut off somebody's head. So it brings things alive while really being very moving thinking about the death of a
small child with golden curls. (lively music) - [Robert] George III's papers won't be restricted to scholars who can make the journey
to Windsor Castle. They're going public. Every single document has
been digitally photographed, and there are some 350,000 pages, so that we can all see them
online anywhere in the world. (bright music) Household ledgers, the king's exchanges with prime ministers, like Lord North and William Pitt, all the correspondence
within the king's family, every private paper is
coming out of the shadows. - Wherever you are you
can work on George III. You can get into the heart
of the Hanoverian Monarchy. Whether you want to know who his under footman was and how much he was paid or his relationship with a prime minister, they will both be there, and curiously enough you may find there is a connection
between those two things. - This was done absolutely with the permission and authority of the Queen who herself has approved this exercise and is keen to make these
collections available. If I may introduce you
to Professor Ed Byrne, of King's College London. - [Robert] The Queen
decided to open the whole Georgian papers project herself. - Mr. Ian Blatchford Director
of the Science Museum. - [Robert] With the British and
American academics involved. - Dr. Karen Wolf over a 100 students at the William and Mary College. And Mr. Peter Barber, head of the map collections
at the British Library. Your Majesty, we've laid out
some items here in the library. - [Robert] Exploring the entire collection will take several years, but some of the early finds were presented for the launch, including this schoolboy
essay on kingship. - This is a essay by George III discussing his role in
relation to Parliament. - [George III] The
supreme power in England is divided into two branches, the legislative vested in the king, the Lords, and Commons
assembled in Parliament, the executive belonging to the King alone. - The King was grappling with the issue of being the monarch of
a country in transition from an older form of monarchy to the form that we begin to see
emerging during his reign and his ability to think these
problems through on paper is a critical part of the development of the modern monarchy. He's very much one of the founding fathers of the engaged constitutional
monarchy that we have today. - Mm-hmm. - These are documents
which have not been seen and will really help transform our understanding of this period. (enchanting music) - [Robert] All through his life George was obsessive about recording it. Here is his memoir of the moment he was elevated from Prince
of Wales to king, age just 22. Curiously, he refers to
himself in the third person as if observing the making of the monarch. - [George III] The Prince of Wales was riding at a little after eight between Kew Bridge and the six-mile stone when a messenger told him an accident had happened to the king. The Prince returned to Kew and ordered his attendants to be silent and pretended his horse was lame. - It was October 1760. George's father was already dead, so he succeeded his grandfather to the thrones of both
Britain and Hanover. But unlike the earlier Georges, George III had been born in
Britain and was proud of it. The royal archives disclose how the making of this monarch had begun back in his childhood. Here we have George's very
own instruction manual written for him when he was
just a boy of 10 by his father. "Instructions for my son George." It contains advice that
he would try to follow for most of his life. "If you can be without war, "let not your ambition draw you into it. "At the same time, "never give up your honor "nor that of the nation." There are some useful tips for a young Hanoverian king. "Convince this nation "that you are not only an
Englishman born and bred, "but that you are also
this by inclination." Wise words that as King he took to heart. "Born and educated in this country," he proudly told Parliament, "I glory in the name of Britain." - That's conscious. That's deliberate. He's made himself into a British monarch, and English is his first language, unlike his grandfather
and his great-grandfather. His interests are English, His culture is English. The United Kingdom, the
technical phrase we use, and the Union Jack they
both come on his watch. - There's financial advice
from his father too. "Employ all your hands, "all your power, "to live with economy. Then he warns about the national debt. "Which if not reduced "will surely one time or other
create such a disaffection "and despair that I dread the consequences "for you my dear son." He goes on, "The sooner
you have an opportunity "to lower the interest,
for God's sake do it." In the event, interest
rates stayed constant all through George III's reign, and Britain was at war for most of it. But from the start, he wanted to do things differently from the way he ran the country to the way he traveled. After 33 years of George II, a new reign demanded fresh symbolism for the young monarch. The result was this, the grandest, the most over-the-top
vehicle in royal history. Weighing four tons and costing seven and
a half thousand pounds, the Gold State Coach took
George III to Parliament in 1762 and has been used at
every coronation since. As successive monarchs
have remarked it's both very uncomfortable and very slow, but then it was never designed for a smooth speedy ride. It was to be a work of art all by itself, a statement of resurgent
British prosperity and power. George III was personally frugal, but he understood the
power of his public image. (gentle music) - He's painted in ceremonial garb for the great state portraits that are sent around the country to hang in town halls and other places. But when he attends public functions, he's wearing conventional
comfortable clothes. - He's got this funny man
of the people aspect to him. That he likes going out riding with his children around Windsor and asking farmers how do you do? - [George III] Well,
friend where are you going? Hey, what's your name? Hey, where do you live? Hey, hey! - And in Windsor he'll
walk around the town or pop in on people. - He understood it was best to appear to be a perfectly ordinary human being who happened to be filling
the office of King. - [Robert] But in reality, there was nothing
ordinary about George III. He arranged his own marriage to Charlotte, a German princess he'd never met, who bore him 15 children. He was driven by his sense of duty to his family and his country. He was methodical, pernickety, a man with never an idle moment. The digitization of his personal archive allows us intimate
access to a deep thinker with a good brain, and inquiring mind, a very complex monarch. - Well, it's quite an exciting moment because this is the first
chance we've had to see the documents from the Georgian
papers appearing online. We can see here that there's a range of essays that George was writing, including this very striking selection of draft essays on despotism. But when we actually get
to the document itself, George's writing about
despotism as a problem, and it's this wonderful clear handwriting and even those people
who are not specialists I think will be able to read pretty straightforwardly this sort of stuff. - [Robert] It is very clear, isn't it? - [George III] When we examine
the annals of the world from the beginning of
government unto this day, we shall find the generality of nations groaning under the yoke of despotism. - "Groaning under the yoke of despotism." He's very clearly putting himself on the side of the angels, isn't he? - Yes, he's considering
himself here as someone who's not going to be
that kind of monarch. This is understanding how
to avoid being a despot. How to be a good and patriotic king. (military drums rolling) - [Robert] But there was one place where George III was seen
as a despot, America. - With the six-pounder right here I could use it to scare the enemy. Is that true yes or no? - [Crowd] Yes. - And I could use it to take
the enemy out is that true? - [Crowd] Yes. - I love artillery, don't you? - [Robert] The struggle
over American independence shattered some of the
young king's aspirations. It was actually Parliament in Westminster that imposed taxes on the colonies. - All right, I need a fairly tall guy to work the other side of
the gun to be my loader. - [Robert] What began with protests, like the Boston Tea Party, escalated into revolution. The Americans chose to
take things personally. - Look at all these volunteers. - [Robert] The bad guy was the king. - Step up to the gun. - [Robert] Even today
they relish their victory at the Battle of Yorktown. - Here at Yorktown the artillery is behind earthworks. What's a good target for my artillery? Those two British frigates in the river. Command a right to left address, everybody we'll step into the gun. Good thing the British are
not really coming today, huh? - You know, George III
was a mean nasty monarch, and he was imposing taxes
out of his own selfishness and then he went crazy, so he's a handy villain
for people to have. - Tank ready! Guys, if you wanna cover
your ears, now is the time. Fire! (cannon booming) Secure the ping. (crowd applauding)
(crowd cheering) - [Robert] This portrait of
the King wearing a red coat was one of George's favorites. Ironically, it was by an
American artist Benjamin West, and it portrays the
King as a man of action. He famously said at the time, "If others will not be active," a dig at his prime minister
Lord North, "I shall drive." The royal archives reveal
his compulsive interest in every aspect of the war effort. - You really see it with these lists that he compiles. This is a memorandum he wrote to himself about how many troops
would be needed in America. This is written early in the war. He is saying we're going to need at least about 38,000 troops over there, and he lists where they'll
be stationed and distributed. It has such details like the need for... - [George III] 52,000 blankets
and 4,200 watch coats. Wagons and harness for 68th Battalion, Viz 277 wagons and 1,117 sets of harness. - We tended to think about
George as this kind of aloof figure who was above the frays, who was above politics, but when you look at his papers, when you look at his
interactions with his ministers, he's very much engaged in
the operations of government. - [Robert] The King kept a close eye on what the American rebels and their French allies were up to. - This is a remarkable one, a list of the French fleet copied from government
documents written in French showing the number of
cannons on each ship. I was very surprised to find it in the king's handwriting. - What does that tell us?
- Because it tells us he didn't have a secretary, and it also shows his voracious interest in every detail of this war. (dramatic orchestral music) (choral singing in foreign language) - [Robert] It's perhaps
surprising that today's Americans are giving their last
King a place of honor. They're making a new image of him two and a half centuries after
destroying their last one. In this Brooklyn studio in New York they specialize in recreating the past. They're building a George III for the new Museum of
the American Revolution, and they're modeling
it on the gilded statue of George as a Roman emperor that once stood in Bowling Green on the southern tip of Manhattan. The royal archives show that
one of the king's own sons visited Bowling Green in the
middle of the American war. Prince William, the
future King William IV, was on active service with the
Royal Navy at the age of 16. Writing home from New York, then still under British control, he tried to cheer his father with news of a great crowd crying, "God bless King George," but he added that he walked past, "the pedestal of the
statue of Your Majesty." The King must have known
that five years earlier his statue had been torn from
its plinth by revolutionaries shortly after the American
Declaration of Independence. - It was gold, and it blinded people
when they looked at it. It was a mark of we've made it as a civilization and a culture. - You see in that moment sort of the desecration
of royal authority. You see that the Americans
sort of shift their anger from Parliament to the person of the king. - They put ropes around the statue, and then the Sons of Liberty on the ground began to pull. Alas, it probably wasn't as exciting as they might have hoped. Since it was made of lead and very weak, it might have just bent at the ankles and fallen straight down. A little bit like the
image of Saddam Hussein when he was pulled down in 2003 in Iraq. All of that lead was melted
down into 42,088 musket balls. Even to this day they're
finding the musket balls that came from King George's statue on revolutionary war battlefields. - So the King ended up being
fired back at the king's men? - That's exactly right. The ultimate insult. - [Robert] The royal archives reveal fresh evidence of the
stress of war upon the king. He felt he had to bolster the government and make sure his
long-serving prime minister, Lord North, had stomach for the fight. - What is amazing about this letter, and again one of the benefits
of actually being here and seeing the letters firsthand, is that there have been constant drafts. He's clearly finding this a
difficult letter to write. - He's agonizing over
this part here, isn't he? - Yes, and you never normally see letters that are this messy. Obviously, the one that he sent out would have been a fair copy of this. But you can also see his thoughts at the time of writing this letter. (gentle music) - Swap. - [Robert] George had absorbed
all the official information coming into the government, but in the royal archives, there are some tantalizing
unofficial sources too, a private network of secret agents reporting directly to the king. - Hmm, Secret Service is
getting 40,000 this year. That's quite a big increase. It was only 32 before. - This, actually, was
quite a revelation to me. He had a spy who wrote to him
regularly called Aristarchus. In this particular
letter, Aristarchus says, "You've been seen walking
around the Queen's garden "in disguise at night time, "and that the French are
planning to assassinate you "while you're doing that." These letters are entirely unpublished. They're not mentioned in the major biographies of George III. - [Robert] So we've come across a sort of Georgian James Bond. - Yes, with the difference that Aristarchus was in his late 60s, and that he was clearly a
lot less agile than Bond. Also, unlike Bond he keeps
having to ask to be paid. (Robert chuckles) - [Robert] Britain's
defeat in the American war was a bitter reverse for the king. - [George III] America is lost. Must we fall beneath the blow? - [Robert] But George swallowed his pride, and three years later, he graciously welcomed the first American ambassador to Britain. (upbeat orchestral music) Away from the national stage, the king's attention to detail was just as intense at home. No previous monarch had
devoted as much care to the raising of royal children as George III and his Queen. Can I ask what it is you've got there? - These are letters from Queen
Charlotte to her governess, Lady Charlotte Finch, and they're talking about the setting up of the royal nursery. She is saying that she's
allowed to have two days off, which is to be at liberty, but when she's in the nursery, she is to think of the
children almost as her own, which is quite a modern thought, I think. - [Robert] In his first year as king, George had drawn up his own
shortlist of potential brides. Charlotte came top and the
proposal was dispatched. He was 23. She was 17, a princess of the German duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. (dramatic music) He sent an envoy to fetch her across a ferociously rough North Sea. The voyage took two weeks. - You are expected to step up to the plate and become a British
Queen, just like that. (dramatic music) It's a terrible journey and
the rough seas, the crossing. She didn't speak English. She didn't write English. but the King and she got
on like a house on fire. (gentle music) - [Robert] Only a few hours after first setting eyes on each other, Charlotte and George were married and crowned King and
Queen a fortnight later. A year on, Queen Charlotte
was adapting to her new life. This is her first letter in English written to Lady Charlotte Finch, who was looking after
her first-born prince, just six weeks old. - [Queen Charlotte] I
hope, when I come to town, that your little Jou Jou
will be dressed in his frock. The King and I embrace the
pretty dear little man. Your affectionate Charlotte. - [Robert] Lady Charlotte Finch would be with this fast expanding family for more than three decades. The King kept height
charts of all his children in his typically exact way, measuring them to the
nearest 16th of an inch. His ambition was to create
a model royal family, and to make sure people saw them, too. - They were a very fertile couple. fifteen children born from 1762 to 1783. So that's quite a tough
schedule for Queen Charlotte. (birds chirping) - Soon after their marriage, George had bought the house that would later become Buckingham Palace and renamed it the Queen's House. While the King was carrying out official duties nearby
at St James's Palace, the Queen's House was home. With his belief in the central importance, not just of the sovereign, but of the royal family, he provided the template for his granddaughter, Queen Victoria, and in so many ways, for the modern monarchy. (upbeat music) - Here we have material in relation to the history of science. King George III's scientific instruments were presented to King's College London. They are now on display
in the Science Museum, including here, Eardley
Norton's famous clock, which was in Buckingham House library and was given to him for his 27th birthday and is regarded, really, as one of the finest
clocks in the collection. - Does it work?
- It does work. It will chime in just a
few minutes I should think. (clock winding) (clock chiming) - [Robert] This astronomical clock had pride of place on the
desk in George III's library, and embodies the king's devotion to both arts and science. It not only tells the
time in a 24-hour format, but keeps track of the tides
all round the British Isles, the movement of the planets, and the phases of the moon. - [Queen Elizabeth] Do you have
things too from George III? - Well, we hold the George
III science collection, Your Majesty.
- Oh, right. - Which is going to be redisplayed in a more central part
of the museum very soon. - We passed it on Monday. It looked terribly full. - It is, absolutely. We get something like 24,000 people a day. - Ugh!
(men laughing) It looked like it. - Here we have what is rightly considered a landmark in astronomy and navigation, this is George III's account of watching the transit of Venus in Richmond Park, demonstrating his interest
in astronomy and science, really contemporary
developments of the day. - [Robert] The King's document described what was going to happen when the planet Venus was seen to pass between the Earth and the Sun, timed to the nearest 30 seconds. It's uncanny to realize that George III was directly contemplating
the 21st-century. - [George III] Morally speaking, none now living will see
the same phenomenon again, which will only happen again
in 1874 and again 2004. (bright music) - George was so excited that he had the king's Observatory built in time for the
occasion in Richmond Park. On the day itself, he and the Queen went to the top. Though today it's in the
midst of restoration, we can retrace their steps to the cupula, where the roof could be opened to the sky. Up here in the cupula is where the King and Queen actually watched the
1769 transit of Venus, though not on this particular telescope. But 250 years later it's
all in full working order. Just wind this handle, and, suddenly, with a bit of help from some WD-40, the aperture opens to reveal
the heavens to the royal gaze. Then all the King had to
do was walk over here, start winding this handle, and the whole cupula moves
around to find the sun. After all that it was
probably just as well the clouds parted and it stopped raining just in time for the transit of Venus on June the 3, 1769. (serene music) (birds chirping) Using a reflecting telescope, the King was the first to
spot the outline of Venus, just as people did on June the 8, 2004. The forecasts were right. If Georgian astronomers could
measure the transit precisely from different places on Earth, then they could work out the
distance from Earth to Venus and, in turn, the size of
the whole solar system. And they did. - He takes his job very seriously. He's studious. He collects great sheaths of paper, diagrams, scientific materials. He is processing knowledge
on a proto-industrial scale as part of his role. So he's the best informed chief executive this country has ever had. - It's an area of great polymaths, and I think people have argued that by the end of the 19th century, you just can't know about it. But in those days you could know about geology, farming, astronomy, an interest in science, an interest in all sorts of other things. I imagine he would have been
quite fun to have dinner with, I don't know, on his good days, obviously. (lively music) - [Robert] George III
was always on the move. His constant journeying
between his palaces in London, Kew, and Windsor, exasperated his family and court. Queen Charlotte wrote to her brother. - [Queen Charlotte] Our life,
if you can call it life, is nothing but hurry. We are often in three places in a week. - [Robert] Yet, paradoxically, George never went very far, never beyond the south coast, no further north than Worcester. But he traveled far and wide in his mind. George championed the long-running quest to calculate longitude at sea. He was a driving force behind
the voyages of Captain Cook, who was originally sent to the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus. This exquisite map plots all three intercontinental voyages by Cook, who went on to plant the British flag in Australia and New Zealand and went in search of
the Northwest Passage. It was drawn by the
king's daughter, Sophia, at the tender age of 14. George's papers include
secret instructions for Cook, with crucial advice. Treat any locals you find with respect. - [George III] Endeavor
by all proper means to cultivate a friendship with them, making them presents of such trinkets as you may have on board
and they may like best. Inviting them to traffic and showing them every kind
of civility and regard. - George isn't going to go
around the world in a ship, that's not the job the King does, but he does know who is doing that, and he is reading what they're writing, and he is following
everything they're doing. He brought the world to him. He would have loved television. The whole point of his library and much of his archive is
to collect that information so he can process it. (dramatic music) - [Robert] George's only seafaring was the odd day trip to review the fleet, as we see here with the
King in his blue garter sash standing at the stern. This Englishman by inclination never set foot on foreign soil, not even to visit his throne in Hanover, and there was much to keep him at home. (dramatic music) For the first half of his reign, George III was intimately and often bitterly involved
in domestic politics. - This is the 1780 general election. - [Robert] Here in the archives, we even find his private intelligence on the likely voting habits of each MP. - Celebrity candidate, John Wilkes, one of the most famous radicals of the 18th century standing. And they're looking for the fight-- - [Robert] Like those early essays, these papers show a King
pondering his own role and the national interest. - Pro, for the king. - He thought he was bringing
in a new form of politics. He felt that the political system was indeed incredibly corrupt. - [George III] The King
said he'd always wanted to extinguish all odious
party distinctions and to get the greatest talents of the day to unite for the common good. But politics didn't work like that. - This is really exciting, because what we're looking at here is a series of letters that
record the king's experience of one of the most
important political crises of the 18th century and indeed of longer. So we're able to trace
in this correspondence on a virtually day-by-day and even hour-by-hour basis. - [Robert] The King was involved in an increasingly tetchy horse trading to get the leading politicians of the day to form a new government. It reached a crisis on March the 23, 1783. - [George III] Lord North,
not having heard from you since the directions I gave you yesterday, I must desire you will come instantly. - It's a summoning of one of the key negotiators in this process of trying
to form a new ministry. we can see here that the
label he's attached to this, noting not only the date and where it was sent from, but the time of day, 30 minutes past 10. - [Robert] With his time stamping, rather like today's emails, George was ahead of his time. - But these are messages being hurried back and
forth across London, I think rather like
cycle couriers might now hurry them across the capital. So you could have several
letters going back and forth in the course of a single
day, late into the night, early in the morning,
as people are actually called in to see the monarch. - [Robert] This is a Sunday as well. We're on the weekend.
- Yes, 23rd of March, 1783. - [Robert] The politicians
were bargaining with the king over who should be in the cabinet, and the Duke of Portland, in line to be prime minister, was no pushover. - So, this is the final offer coming from the Duke of Portland. If that's no go, the Duke says that's it. Then he's writing off to
Mr. Pitt, William Pitt, the future prime minister, who will be his next and
last throw of the dice here. - [George III] Mr. Pitt
is desired to come here, the Duke of Portland has wrote an answer which ends in declining to
prepare a plan for my inspection. Consequently, the
negotiation is finally ended. Queen's House, March the 23, 1783, 48 minutes past 8:00 p.m. - [Robert] That's sort of dinner time on a Sunday night in March. - That's right.
- That's gone off to Mr. Pitt. There is some runner rushing
through London with that, and then... - Here's the very brusque
note that's going out at the end of what's been a long day, no doubt for the king, where he just wants to make sure everybody knows where we stand. He's saying right to the Duke
of Portland and Lord North. - [George III] The Duke of Portland, I shall not give him any further trouble. - [Robert] And Lord North was
yet again in the doghouse. - [George III] Lord
North must therefore see that all negotiation is at an end. 35 minutes past 10:00 p.m. - [Robert] The King felt let
down by scheming politicians. There was no point, he
thought, in going on. - Just how serious the
situation we've now got to becomes apparent if you look at the next document in the sequence, which gives me a bit of a
frisson when you read it. - [George III] A long experience has gradually prepared my mind to expect the time when I should be no longer of utility to this empire. That hour is now come. - This is a draft of abdication. - [Robert] Gosh, really. - George, at the end of the line trying to work out what you do with this inability to form a government which he can have confidence in. He wants to be the person who ends party, brings together the most able to work in the national interest, and what this speech is
basically saying is I've failed. - [Robert] I mean, what we see here, he's really troubled here, isn't he? - Yes. - There's a lot of redrafting
and crossing out going on. - This is written at a state
of high agitation, I think. You do get a sense of the troubled mind, the blotches and the
scrawling and scratchings out, and we begin to come
to the end of the line, and this is the key passage. - [George III] I am therefore
resolved to resign my crown and all the dominions appertaining to it to the Prince of Wales, my eldest son and lawful successor, and to retire to the care
of my electoral dominions. - This is somewhere alongside
that Edward VIII speech, I think, in terms of the emotions that are on display here. Again, some ironies in this document because these electoral
dominions he's talking about, i.e. Hanover, and his roots
he feels are in England. This is an exile. (gentle music) - [Robert] But on reflection, George didn't sail off to Hanover. After all, he had plenty of
family matters to sort out. (upbeat music) - To Mrs. H. Hoch? - [Woman] This whole left column is the Prince Regent's dinner, and more meat and things on the sideboard. Thirty loins of veal. - [Woman] There's something sausages. - [Woman] Yeah. - [Woman] A large capon roasted. - Yeah, or two. (upbeat music) - [Robert] The King's eldest son, who would one day be Prince Regent and then King George IV, was infamous for his problems
with wine, women, and money. It's not hard to chart a link between the king's eventual
breakdowns and turmoil at home. It had been a model family
when the children were young. Now came trouble. - His sense of his position as a monarch makes it difficult for him to be anything other than a control
freak with his family. He's seen what happens to monarchies when they get out of control, when the family structure breaks down, when people cut loose and go
off and do their own things. He's very frightened of that. The stability of the monarchy
is an essential prerequisite for the stability of Britain. (gentle music) - [Robert] By the time he turned 19, the Prince was already
going off the rails, as the King reported
to his prime minister. - [George III] I am sorry to be obliged to open a subject to Lord North that has long given me much pain, but I can rather do it on
paper than in conversation. It is a subject to which I
know he is not quite ignorant. My eldest son got last year
into a very improper connection with an actress and woman
of indifferent character. - [Robert] The King made
clear a multitude of letters had passed between them, which the actress was using
to blackmail the Prince. So the King had asked an
intermediary to buy her off. - [George III] He has her
consent to get these letters on her receiving 5,000 pounds, undoubtedly an enormous sum, but I wish to get my son
out of this shameful scrape. - [Robert] Lord North
didn't disappoint this time. He'd ordered up the cash, roughly 750,000 in today's money, for what he called Special Service. A sort of slush fund for the king. While several of George's sons
were packed off to Hanover to learn some German self-discipline, his eldest son became
even more of a problem. The King was infuriated by his scheming with the opposition in Parliament, and also by his debts. Some years later, under a new prime minister, the King had the correspondence with his son copied into a book, and wrote a stern note to say
he was passing it to the PM. - [George III] I choose to
deposit this copy with Mr. Pitt, that should the subject be
mentioned in Parliament, he may be fully apprised of the
uniform conduct I have held, the wishing to save a
son, at the same time, not forgetting what, as a
king, I owe to my people. (dramatic music) - [Robert] All this was
perhaps a key trigger for the king's first
major breakdown in 1788, and his incarceration at Windsor and Kew, sometimes in a straitjacket. It has been suggested it was
the genetic disease porphyria, but modern opinion regards it
as a form of bipolar disorder. - Reading the case records, which are very detailed of course, and the statements by lots
of people who saw him, it wasn't just he was talking very fast, he was talking ridiculously fast, leaping around from subject to subject, not making much sense, clearly very excitable, very irritable, sexually inappropriate at times, all of those things would
suggest a diagnosis now that we would call mania or hypomania. - [Robert] The equerry,
who remained with the king, kept a daily journal of what he called, His Majesty's most serious
and afflicting illness, while the king's physicians bickered over the proper treatment. In despair, they asked for the help of an obscure doctor from Lincolnshire, a landmark moment for psychiatrists. - December the 5, 1788, is a kind of big day for us, because they admit that they're defeated, and they call upon Francis Willis, who is a clergyman but he's also a doctor, and he is a specialist in lunacy. So this is probably the first time what you might call a consultant opinion in mental disorder is summoned into the exalted world of medicine. So it is a bit of a turning point. They've turned to a specialist
to get specialist advice, and, amazingly enough,
it would appear to them, his advice seems to work. - My dear Frederick. - [Robert] We discovered
an intriguing letter from the King to his second son expressing concern about an old soldier with health problems of his own. - [George III] My dear Frederick, I desire you will send the
enclosed by this night's post. I am sorry to hear the Grand Marshall has had two fresh strokes of apoplexy, as I fear he will not last long. - [Robert] He sounds calm and collected, yet it was written in the darkest days of George's own illness. It's hardly the letter of a mad king. - [George III] Believe me
ever, my dear Frederick, your most affectionate father, George R, Windsor, December 28th, 1788. - I think you would
say that is unexpected. When you look at the descriptions of what he was like earlier that month, that does seem quite a fast recovery, but then that does happen in psychiatry. You do have moments of
calmness in the storm. That certainly happens as well. - [Robert] On his recovery, he went on a visit to, of all places, a madhouse in Richmond, where he discussed the
merits of straitjackets, as his equerry recorded. - [Man] Fortunately, His Majesty, heard this ill-timed conversation without the least agitation. - Any diagnosis that we make, you shouldn't take this as
being an absolute certainty, and I don't think we'll ever know fully what was wrong with King George. - [Robert] It was the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, who passed on advice to
the King from his doctors, advice the King took to heart. - [William] Mr. Pitt humbly begs leave to acquaint Your Majesty that he finds the physicians think it of
the greatest consequence for Your Majesty's
recovery to change the air. Fatigue in the meantime
ought to be avoided. (upbeat music) (dog barking) - So, George set off with the family to Weymouth in Dorset. It was the royal seal of approval for British seaside holidays. The public flocked just to
watch the King have tea, go to the theater, take a boat trip around the bay. But then it was quite hard
not to bump into the monarch, for 14 summers he had his holiday home right here on the front
at Gloucester Lodge. - It was very public, and to begin with, this
was rather exciting. They were there for the king's health. So when they went sea bathing, it was also incredibly public. - Every morning he'd climb
into a bathing machine, just like this one, and it'd be wheeled out over
the sands into the water, and once he was there, he'd be helped out by two
assistants called dippers who'd dunk him beneath the waves. On his first morning, there was another bathing
machine alongside. It was full of musicians, and as George sank beneath the waves, the band struck up "God Save The King". ♪ God save the King ♪ ♪ Long live the King ♪ ♪ May the King live forever ♪ - There were long rides through
the Dorset countryside, too. Farmer George, as he was known, relished swapping notes
on crops and livestock. The King loved Weymouth,
come rain or shine, and Weymouth loved the king. His family had other ideas. While his sons spent as
little time here as possible, preferring the raffish charms of Brighton, his daughters had little choice. As Princess Mary complained, "This place is more dull and stupid "than I can find words to express." (gentle music) The more his sons went their own way, the closer the King clung
to his unmarried daughters. Their one solace was the bolthole their mother had found
back home at Windsor. The King's illness and his
outbursts terrified the Queen. She was never quite the same again. She desperately wanted somewhere
to escape court politics and her erratic husband, somewhere she could
pursue a life of her own. So, she bought this small estate just below Windsor Castle and would retreat here
as often as possible with her daughters to what she
called her little paradise. (soft idyllic music) They would drive down to
Frogmore House for day trips. It wasn't much of a
paradise for the daughters. While the Queen enjoyed
tatting, a form of lace-making, the increasingly frustrated princesses, longing for households of their own, did their best to wile away the time. - It's a very female place. One of the daughters, the artistic daughter, Elizabeth, paints a whole gallery, and to begin with, it's very much a place everyone likes going, but as the Queen's temper worsens, in a sense, it becomes a penance for the daughters to go there, and they're remaining in
this sort of Gothic nunnery. They turned to whoever was near, which was of course
the equerries at court. (suspenseful music) - The King's youngest
daughter, and his favorite, was Princess Amelia. The royal archives reveal
that a teenage flirtation with a soldier twice her age
became an ardent love affair, but one that was doomed in
a way that would trigger the king's final illness. There are few Georgian
documents in this great archive as human, as intensely personal, as the correspondence of Princess Amelia. There are these letters, hundreds of them, often undated, often hard to read, but all bursting with passion for the man she could never marry. Charles FitzRoy was the
king's trusted equerry, and Amelia was smitten. "My ever dearest and most
beloved darling," she wrote, and, "Oh, God, I'm almost mad for you." She sometimes signed her letters "AFR, Amelia FitzRoy," and wrote as if they lived together. - She's writing so frankly. Although it took me by surprise when I first deciphered it, because she says, "You're my husband." They haven't married, but in this fantasy life where
she is buying the tea kettles and the silver and having them engraved, he is her husband, and so she can write to him on any matter. - [Robert] What gives this
affair added poignancy is that Amelia's life was
to be cut short at 27. She had tuberculosis. - [Flora] She's near
death, in extreme pain, and this love for FitzRoy is
her way of rising above that. - [Robert] Some three
months before her death, Amelia wrote a will, which was to prove highly
sensitive to the royal family. She left almost everything
to Charles FitzRoy, and to avoid any doubt, she itemized it. "All, underlined, "my personal property. "Jewels, plate, trinkets of every sort, "books, prints, pictures, chattels, "and every article of furniture." - The Queen, of course, if she knew, said nothing. The King knew nothing. (dramatic music) - [Robert] October the 25, 1810, was the actual day of the king's Jubilee, 50 years on from that
momentous ride near Kew. To mark the occasion, George appeared on the arm of the Queen. It was his last public engagement. He was now almost blind and had to stop writing. His daily visits to
Amelia had been emotional. She was now fading, and that Jubilee day, her brothers were summoned
to make their farewells. On November the 2nd, Amelia succumbed to the tuberculosis. The King was distraught. The news came in a letter
from the king's doctor to the Prince of Wales. "It gives me pain to
inform Your Royal Highness "that the Princess Amelia is no more. "I have just witnessed
her last expiration." And he notes the time, "12 o'clock." In a separate letter that very afternoon, FitzRoy made clear the Prince of Wales had immediately been in touch. He'd wasted no time with condolences. He wanted FitzRoy to surrender
his rights in the will. The next day, FitzRoy agreed to hand over all Amelia's property to the Prince and one of his brothers. They were to be, "residuary legatees for
their beloved sister, "the Princess Amelia, in lieu of me." - So FitzRoy is elbowed out. For them, it was just
too incendiary an issue. (dramatic violin music) - [Robert] Over the next six weeks or so, FitzRoy tried to retrieve his position, in increasingly tense exchanges
with the royal solicitors. He expressed, most decidedly
my objection to any part of the jewels being sold. She'd wanted him to dispose
of them as he thought best. The princes replied, "They were surprised at his tone." The truth was they wanted
to avoid a public scandal, and the Queen was anxious
to protect the king. - [Queen Charlotte] There still remains one point to be broke to him, namely poor Amelia's will, the ignorance of which may lead to very unpleasant conversations. - [Robert] But events had overtaken them. Two days after Amelia's
death the King had a relapse and had to be confined in
a straitjacket once more. His doctors were quizzed
about his prospects. The archives contain their
replies to a royal questionnaire, and within days, the
King had agreed his son should take over all his duties, the start of what became
known as the Regency. - The possibility that he
has more than one affliction becomes increasingly more
likely as you get older. Perhaps he suffers from dementia. We know he was blind. That could have been the result of some of the things
he was given by the way, or it could be that this is
the late phase of his illness. (birds chirping) - [Robert] George was
moved to the secluded north-facing part of Windsor Castle, where although he couldn't see the view, he would stand by the window and salute as he heard the ceremonial
guard march past below. In a touching letter to
the new Prince Regent, the Queen said she'd
been to see her husband. - [Queen Charlotte] The dear
King talked much of his family with great affection. He looks better than I have seen him after any one of his other illnesses. - [Robert] But this time
there would be no recovery. (somber music) (solemn choral singing) The twilight of George
III lasted nine years. This startling drawing
in the royal library captures his isolation, and was only seen after his
death in January 1820, aged 81. Even then, his family felt it would be better received if changes were made, befitting the man they called, "the father of his people," and words of mourning were added, that Handel had set to music, Biblical words, that George
would have known well. - [Handel] Kindness, meekness, and comfort were in his tongue. If there was any virtue and
if there was any praise, he thought on those things. His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth evermore. - [Robert] It had been an age
of bloodshed and revolution, but not in George III's Britain. - His contemporaries, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, these are revolutionary
and dangerous figures. They destroy things. Napoleon destroys everything. George III makes
everything secure and safe. We need to put him back
as the presiding figure who has an active role
interacting with the politicians, the statesman, the
scientists, the warriors, and the scholars who are
creating a new Britain. - None of this great
project would have happened if the King hadn't been
meticulous, obsessive even, about filing everything
that came across his desk. And he was proud of it too, as, shortly before his final illness, he told his prime
minister, Spencer Perceval. "The King," Perceval noted, "mentioned his having preserved "every political paper that had come "into his hands during his reign. "That he had already arranged all of them "from the time of Mr. Pitt's
first coming into office, "so that he could lay his
hand at once upon any one." He added, "It's hard work." - Historians get very excited about unseen documents. (chuckles nervously) It's extraordinary, the
riches of the archives. Oliver can tell you I visited on Monday, and I was practically
levitating with enthusiasm. It's really, really quite,
quite rich and wonderful. - Well, I think there's so much here. - Yes.
- Every reign and everything. (dramatic music) - [Robert] The lasting
legacy of George III is an enduring constitutional monarchy. His advice to his own young sons captures the essence of his vision. - [George III] A bad
prince may be restrained, and it is fit he should be so, by the British Constitution. A good prince can never be embarrassed, much less distressed, by the natural effects of it. A King of Britain who has been bred to govern on such principles will place himself deservedly in the highest rank of humanity. (majestic choral music)
