King George III (Documentary)

believe it or not there once was a time when the British public did not pay much attention to the private lives of their monarchs and then King George the 3rd came to power at first he led one of the dullest courts in history but as time went on George began to display alarming signs of mental illness and eventually he went mad and yet it was King George's madness that garnered him sympathy and made the royal family a topic of public interest this is his story [Music] it's pretty frightening when anyone goes mad but if a king goes mad then the whole state may be in trouble George the Third's reign was one of those tumultuously in English history it started off with a great constitutional crisis it involved the losing of the American colonies the Industrial Revolution the French Revolution to say nothing of the Kings own madness I don't think that any doubt that the influence of the crown did decline that one of the reasons of course is that the King ultimately went mad was insane everyone had their place that was the way he liked it he liked order and he liked good conduct in the Declaration of Independence the Americans announced that George the Third's a tyrant and that he was somebody he was unfit to be the ruler of three people [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Mad King George the third was King of England for 60 years and the story of his illness is probably the most famous in English history from the age of only 12 George started to feel the pressure of responsibility of birth in his private and public life he came to the throne in 1760 when he was 22 and fifty years later a Regency was declared his son took over the reins of power and George was left blind deaf and mad he lived on as king in name only for nine more years George a third is remembered especially amongst the Americans as being the person who lost the American colonies but he was much more complicated man than that I think that when we look back at him we will see him as the person who actually almost despites himself put the monarchy on the map before George the 3rd Kings were despised they were thrown out they were beheaded after George a third the British monarchy really rose in public esteem that was partly because he went mad and he won the affections and sympathies of his people for that very reason like his father and his grandfather George the 3rd was a Hanoverian the German House of Hanover was able to secure its role in English history almost by accident in 1714 Queen Anne died but none of her seventeen children survived and so it was to a distant German cousin that the crown passed George the first was crowned King of England in 1714 marking the start of the Georgian age the age of the four successive kings called George the gorgeous George's George the second succeeded his father to the throne in 1727 despite growing up in England he like his father spoke no English he loathed his eldest son Frederick calling him that nauseas little beast Frederick was George the Third's father the Georges were Hanoverians before George a third they'd basically been German and spoken German Georgia third was the first of the Hanoverians who really felt proud to be British all the Hanoverian Kings had roused with their heirs these rails were pretty spectacular and they also had major political concert because the airs then went and banked the opponents to the fathers ministries George was a premature baby born in lodgings in San James's square in London in 1738 following an argument with King George ii his parents prince frederick and princess augusta had been evicted from their apartment sister James's Palace then in 1751 when he was only twelve George's life suddenly changed gear his dissolute father Frederick died unexpectedly in the arms of his dancing master his elderly grandfather George ii would not live for much longer it became urgent that the young george be trained for his future role as king of england george's childhood was a rather arid affair with little affection he grew up with pressure and responsibility a boy who was destined to run the country his mother's cry of fear King George was one he constantly and increasingly heard as he grew up his father dies when he's 12 his mother has a large family she's a slightly cold woman I think I don't think there's an awful lot of affection and what affection there was went to his younger brother Edward who was the favorite of the family and so George is looking around desperately to someone who is fond of him and if I may use the cliche looking round for the father figure and he chose the wrong for the figure the father is Lord Butte our Lord Butte of course is his Tudor Butte was very happy to advise the Prince of Wales but a North Shore the advice was actually very good Butte was appointed by George's mother Augusta for her Butte was ideal Cavani birth physically attractive and able to provide the education and advice George needed to became it was beauty and indirectly had a bigger influence over the course of George's early life than any other person but there was one notable exception and that is the strange story of Hannah Lightfoot it said Hannah married George before he was King of England and before he married Queen Charlotte Hannah Lightfoot has been a missing person for the last 243 years what happened to her is still a mystery Hannah was born in 1730 when she was quite young her father died and she and her mother moved to the center of London the young Prince of Wales later George the third caught sight of Hannah when he was on his way to the theatre so impressed was he with her beauty that he arranged through an intermediary that he and the young girl should meet and they subsequently fell in love after the families of Hannah and George discovered the liaison they wanted it brought to a close for they're vastly different reasons and it was decided that Hannah should be married off to somebody more of her own clothes and a man called Isaac Oxford was offered a dowry to marry Hannah and the wedding took place on the 11th of December 1753 but doctor Keith's marriage chapel in Mayfair after the wedding Hannah was abducted and it is believed that she was taken into the care of George the 3rd Prince of Wales Isak Axford searched high and low for his wife but she simply disappeared three years later it would seem that hannah had her portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds one of England's finest portrait painters of the day the portrait shows a lady wearing fine satin son lace and it's been dated to 1756 because of the style of her dress the original documents described the painting as mrs. Hannah Oxford the fair Quaker putative and morganatic wife of George the third that is to say she was his natural wife the very existence of this painting of Hannah a Quaker from nowhere is perhaps the most intriguing piece of evidence of this tale the painting is without a doubt genuine so why did Joshua Reynolds an artist who usually only painted the aristocracy paint this young and ordinary woman and as importantly who commissioned him even today these key questions remain unanswered there are many people today who believe that they are descended from Hanna and the prince there are also people who feel that they have a family connection with her in a famous court case one hundred years later a marriage certificate and a will were produced both documents referred to a named George the third and Hanna Lightfoot and they also implied that they had produced children the marriage certificate was dated the 27th of May 1759 and said that the Reverend James Wilmot have married George wealth Prince of Wales and Hannah Lightfoot the production of these documents in court caused a furore II and despite the fact that they were authenticated by the leading handwriting expert of the day they were impounded for a hundred years on the grounds that they were forgeries this is a copy of Hannah's will it is signed in a very shaky hand by a lady calling herself Hannah Regina it is dated 1762 and in that document she leaves to the care of their royal father George the third the care of two sons and a daughter so we can assume that if that document is genuine that Hannah had two sons and daughter before 1762 if these documents are genuine they prove beyond any shadow of doubt but George Prince of Wales married Hannah Lightfoot before he married Queen Charlotte it would seem all traces of Hannah Lightfoot and her strange story have been eradicated from the history books [Music] what we have in 1759 is the 21 year old George Prince of Wales heir to the throne of England perhaps married to hannah Lightfoot and within 12 months yet again everything in his life was to be turned upside down [Music] one day in October 1760 king george ii went to the bathroom a few minutes later his valet heard a groan ran in and found the king on the floor with a large gash on his right temple he was laid on a bed and bloodied but not a drop phoned the ventricle in his heart had burst the king tried to speak but failed and died his dissolute son Frederick the Prince of Wales had unexpectedly died nine years earlier having caught a cold playing tennis and so it was to the Kings 22 year old grandson that the crown now passed George out riding when the news is brought to him that his grandfather georgia ii has had a stroke died and he is now king of england the minute george heard that his grandfather had died he knew that his time had come his destiny had arrived his reaction was one of sheer panic for all the years of Bute straining had now to be realized however george's first instinct was not to seize the reins of power it was the rush to Butte and ask him what he should do the first task was to find a suitable royal bride and quickly it became a matter of almost neurotic compulsive frenzy the king and decided that matrimony was necessary and the sooner the better so they got these lists seized almanacs of the courts of Europe and they went through all the princesses they had a shortlist of about eight or nine to begin with her thing and they made polite investigations and one by one they were crossed out it really is rather delightful one of them was was pleasant enough lady but very large and George thought he couldn't cope that another one was again very well spoken of but had a taste for philosophy and he decided he couldn't bear a philosopher Queen and then another one if I amber rightly there was a scandal in the family I think her mother had gone off with the garden or something in another one George says rather melodramatically that there was bad blood in the family says secret was the process of selection that not even the government were told that what was happening until all the formalities had been completed after much wrangling Butte and George finally settled upon princess charlotte of mecklenburg-strelitz of whom the young king knew little the consequence was that charlotte who was not even on the first sources got promoted and eventually she was the only one that against whom no objection could be raised at all and very suitable only when the marriage negotiations had been completed did Charlotte hear of her destiny she was summoned downstairs to dine with her mother and the British ambassador and told to her complete surprise you are going to be Queen of England she was given a week to recover from a shock and then sailed from Germany to be married the very evening she arrived in London but Charlotte comes over from a very small German Court she had no reason tall tube you expecting to marry anyone of any importance and this offer from the King of England really was an incredible scoop for her on the day they were married George and Charlotte met for the very first time George is said to have started and turned pale at the sight of his bride she was described by onlookers as undeniably plain even ugly this was not to dog young George for long he required a queen who would be responsible and who would bear him lots of children again you see George very serious man he says that he's not concerned with Beauty what he is concerned with is his duty and he hopes that their manage will be fruitful well it certainly was I had 15 I think it was in the end so that today text in Charlotte fulfilled the bill beautifully they were married in st. James's Chapel the ceremony was quiet and informal but the wedding ceremony reports were quite damning she was hideously dressed sat.1 account her wedding dress was sumptuous if eccentric said 11 her outfit was so heavy that it dragged itself and the rest of her clothes halfway down a waist a King's Minister Riley commented the spectators knew as much of her upper half as the king would himself before long 14 days later on the 22nd of September 1761 their Majesties King George the 3rd and Queen Charlotte were crowned in Westminster Abbey the coronation was near chaos not only the sword of state but the chairs for the king and queen to sit on had been forgotten the ceremony was delayed for hours a muddle was made of the procession and by the time the ceremony was over it was already grown dark west of all during the ceremony a large and valuable jewel fell from the king's crown for many this mishap was symbolic predicting the loss of the American colonies George the third doggedly fulfilled his marital duties and he and Charlotte had child after child the expense of such a large family may account for George and Charlotte's reputation for being frugal and mean indeed this home loving couple were often satirized famously forbidding the consumption of sugar in their children's tea they did little entertaining their court was described as the dullest in Europe and the aristocracy of England soon began to avoid the royal couple but they like to be at home with their children and they cut corners as a consequence they didn't particularly want to entertain and they were very careful to make sure that the children it up their crusts and things like that Charlotte gained a reputation for her abilities to save money encouraged by George who would only allow one slice of toast for breakfast she perfected the art of reusing leftover food I think George the third really tried to be as sober as he could when all around him people were living a very wild life the 18th century was known as the wickedest age irreligious and depraved for the rich it was a time of indulgence and debauchery eating to excess and drinking like Lords among the masses disease poverty and prostitution were commonplace the mob rioted against high taxes and laws that restricted the little freedoms they had of course it was an enormous contrast to have a very sober court where people didn't cough or sneeze and really it was rather boring Fanny Burney was Queen Charlotte's lady-in-waiting she was also a writer she colorfully described how one was expected to behave at court in the first place you must not coffee if you find a tickling in your throat you must arrest it for making any sound if by chance the hatpin runs into your head you must not take it out if the pain is very great you must be sure to bear it without wincing if it brings tears to your eyes you must not wipe them off George's reign was a period of tremendous growth and development of all fronts the Industrial Revolution was beginning to gather pace the middle classes were thriving craftsmen such as Josiah Wedgwood were making fine china in the arts Jane Austen was writing her first novels and Joshua Reynolds was painting some of the most noble of English society throughout England life was changing rapidly and beyond recognition new cities were founded and canals brought coal to hasten industrial growth the English Empire was expanding throughout the world England was enjoying victories unparalleled in history India Australia the West Indies and the Americas George was a great patron of the flourishing arts and sciences he had a great interest in agriculture and loved nothing better than walking across his land chatting to locals among the public particularly in Windsor this earns him the nickname farmer George he was of course a very cultured man he was also an artistic man he was interested in the fine arts and of course along with other members of the royal family both past and present he did study architecture and was an accomplished draftsman but he was also a farmer and very much a typical country squire of the 18th century and many people think that that was what he was in fact best suited for however during George's reign we also see the power of the crown diminishing and the power of Parliament and its ministers increasing there's very complex relationship between the crown and Parliament in the 18th century they were both crucial parts of the Constitution in essence the King had the right to choose the ministers himself but obviously it was important that he chose ministers that enjoyed the confidence of Parliament and could get governmental business through the two houses of parliament for the first 10 years of his reign George appointed minister after minister the King had the right to choose his ministers but this proved to be a far more difficult task than it would seem many of them simply couldn't cope the strain of this was another stress upon George's health upset him very much indeed it's very worrying and at times he actually does reveal this he writes and says he's not sure that he can put up with more of it now I dare say the Kings say that from time to time anyway but in George's case he is obviously highly strung he does find it difficult and it doesn't make life easier for him George the Third's poor health started quite quickly after he became King it has often been attributed to the responsibilities of his position and the size of his family at such a young age although historians disagree there's a view that the first noticeable indication of his ill health to come was in 1765 at first it's just a feeling that something is slightly wrong the king who talks a lot is now talking even faster with more intensity he was agitated in his movements he's even more agitated is it just a passing phase or is it something which is worrying in the spring of 1765 George Grenville the Prime Minister wrote various accounts of the Kings prolonged and alarming illness the King all this time continues ill and sees none of his ministers the Kings countenance and manner are a good deal estranged he sees nobody whatever not even his brothers clearly Grenville was somewhat mystified by the Kings malady and the Kings illness caused a general alarm in the court the doctors were privately very concerned about this attack these were probably the first symptoms of the terrible illness that was to affect him so seriously later in his life George a third had a history of illness and we have a well documented account going back to 1765 of him having sort of feverish conditions looking as though he was very angry his eyes began to bulge so I think we can say fairly confidently that although George was clearly regarded as being married in 1788 to nine in 1801 in 1811 this illness in 1765 may have been the first signs of things to come so far as I'm aware nobody actually utters the word mad in 1765 whereas in 1788 you find people in November writing down in the privacy of their Diaries in the Latin language Rex na stare in sonnet our King is married in 1788 the King did go mad the pressures of office had clearly taken a toll but the crisis that may have sent him over the edge was his inability to come to terms with the loss of the American colonies in 1783 but George it was the final straw [Music] I think if there's two things that people know about George the third its his madness and the loss of the American colonies he certainly felt it deeply and it was seen at the time as something which in which he was had to take his share of the blame although the British Empire was expanding on all fronts there was one major problem the threat of rebellion in America I mean it used to be argued that George was mad and that this is one of the reasons why in a fit of insanity presumably he provoked the Americans that one woman was he wasn't mad at that stage and even if George was married Lord North who his prime minister was certainly not mad and who can't argue that the whole of the House of Commons was mad and I don't think you can argue that the British nation was mad and in any case something like a third of the Americans were still supporting Britain and only they were mad as well so I think that when the the crisis was developing George the third did not in fact play a very important role in it and he makes it clear and says he's not I'm not defending the king not offended the crown I am defending the right of Parliament this is a British Parliament these are our colonies and we have the right to text them America was an increasingly prosperous and self-confident country when Britain defeated the French in Canada removing any threat from the North American radicals first began to consider the idea of Independence by 1763 England had been at war for over seven years this war had cost a fortune and created an enormous national debt which had to be cleared the government tried to introduce new financial demands on the colonies the now famous Stamp Act these demands caused immense fuss in America because the argument that the Americans produced was that they were being taxed by a body the Westminster Parliament in which they were not represented and they claimed all those who who were agitated about this claimed the need for a new constitutional relationship in essence that crisis the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 to 1766 is the kernel of the dispute minister after minister comes up with different ideas how to raise a revenue in America because he's forced to because Parliament insist upon it because the British nation insist upon it why should they go on paying taxes at this high level if the Americans are getting away scot-free so that although the Stamp Act is repealed it still leaves a problem how are we going to make Americans pay more well if not by a stand pep-pep spy port duties famous customs duties but the Americans will not pay them and not only will they not pay them but they're very unpleasant to the people who are trying to collect the duties of the famous tarring and feathering and so the situation escalates Lord North has the bright idea of course of introducing a revenue tax through tea and the American radicals then take the tea and throw it into Boston Harbor so what is really starts off as a financial question only to try to get rid of this enormous national debt finishes up as a very difficult constitutional political question and I think over and above that there is the feeling that these two countries are beginning to grow apart many Americans were not willing to repeal but they still regarded George the third as their king and not as the tyrant who opposed the brave Colonials however it was to be the radicals who wrote the script in the disputes between the British crown and the American colonies in the 1760s most people had never at any stage envisaged a declaration of independence certainly they had not wished to see a major war leading to independence but the political crisis in the mid 1770 seems first of all the outbreak of fighting in Massachusetts in 1775 and then a growing realization on the part of the radicals that they are going to have to go for independence if they wish to achieve their aims what tends to be forgotten is they're really two wars of American independence there's the war that started in 1775 which saw the Americans drive the British and the loyalists out of America or what drive the look loyalists into as it were political quiescence and there is the second war of American independence which begins in the summer of 1776 when howl lands his massive army at Staten Island the biggest force the British yet had ever sent abroad and that is a bitter war that goes on till 1783 while George did not play a major role in the crisis his attitude changed once the war had started his policy on the American colonies became incredibly simple the colonists must be reduced to absolute obedience if needs be by the ruthless use of force essentially George the third had a conservative conception of the nature of the British Empire now before one criticizes him for that one should note that so did most British commentators have a conservative conception and indeed had George the third sat down in 1770 and said let us give independence to the 13 colonies there would have been political outrage that he was breaking all sorts of constitutional conventions having said that it could be argued that George the Third's response to the American War of Independence and response to the buildup of tension in the relationship was less than imaginative the king obviously is very much concerned with a great chunk of his empire he's going to be able to declare itself independent so he is very keenly interested in the war and in any case is a tough character who wants to go on fighting as long as there is some reasonable chance that the Americans will have to give in the second reason why he takes such an important part in what once the war starts is that Lord North is so anxious to bail out and not conduct the war so it's George who is saying pull yourself together you'll be all right stand by me and we will soldier on to the end there's no doubt in fact that the war against America was a war of the British people with very popular support it they thought they had a right to it it has the complete support of Parliament if you're on the other side of the Atlantic you can't without much excitement or hatred of Parliament he's got to be personified you've got to have some person preferably a tyrant who can it possibly be well I suppose they could have whipped up a campaign against law of North but so Lord North is so amiable and so funny and so fat and so cheerful it is very difficult to have him as an ogre consequently a thing to do is to say we have a brutal King and that this king is not to be is not fit to be the king of a free people what was it Tom Paine calling the royal brute now whatever he was he wasn't a royal brute but it makes for very good propaganda so in absence I think they use George George the third began to lose political support for the war his Minister Lord North resigned in 1781 Parliament's view was that Britain should concentrate on fighting France and Spain and not send any more troops to America this was the decisive moment when George deterrent became known as the Mad King who lost America for George the loss of the American colonies was the one event more than any other that finally sent him over the edge into madness it's pretty frightening when anyone goes mad but if a king goes mad then the whole state may be in trouble if you accuse him of being mad and then it's wrong or he gets better late a you may be marked down to be thrown out but if you don't point out that he's mad and decisions get taken which are based on unsound mind then dreadful things can happen when George the third became unwell he was treated at first as if it were a physical disorder such as gout or fever but his behavior became so odd and irrational the doctors diagnosed flying gout the disease had left from his feet to his head gradually his condition intensified it started off with a propensity to talk with sleeplessness with hoarseness with irritation with anger with bulging eyes and it mounted into real delirium he talked in consequentially and crazily in a confused state for ten or fifteen or twenty hours at a stretch he couldn't sleep he was absolutely insufferable to be with he became fierce and angry in all those ways it was clear to his court that he was becoming peculiar and the question was was the king actually going mad or was it just a physical illness members of the court feared for Queen Charlotte's safety after the King appeared frightening Lee at her bedside one night the couple were kept apart the King was taken against his will to queue outside London Charlotte insisted she should go as well but was forbidden to see her husband the King was not returned to Windsor until the following year he did suffer occasionally from delusions he thought in his mad bouts that London was being deluged by enormous waves he thought that he was in love with Lady Elizabeth the Countess of Pembroke he certainly had delusions but nowadays when we say is somebody mad we often mean was he primarily mad was he psychotic and I think the answer there is that the madness of George the third came from a variety of physical and organic conditions that were so painful and disturbing that they drove him to do areum he wasn't primarily mad he was secondarily mad it's now widely accepted that George the third were suffering from porphyria which was unknown at the time this is an inherited disease affecting the nervous system and it's diagnosis also suggests an alarming possibility that George the Third's illness was not an isolated case and it may run in the family there is a certain amount of evidence that some of George the Third's predecessors for example James the first and above all Queen Anne suffered from various of the same symptoms which he experienced we know also that's a couple of his sons maybe George his successor as George and forth also suffered from similar symptoms colic bilious pains lethargy and things like that which suggests that he passed it on one of the consequences of having porphyria is that one's urine becomes purple now we know from Georgia Thirds doctors that he did had purple urine and purple colored stools as well eighteenth-century doctors did little more than try to keep the patient comfortable and try to maintain the balance of the body's elements or humors among the most common form of treatment was bleeding literally removing from the patient a large quantity of blood a job often done by the local barber the doctors to George the third would have bled him in the traditional way they would have taken a thumb Lancet onto his the main vein of the arm and removed anywhere from 12 to 20 ounces of blood they would have done this on maybe several days in a row some rest in between now the type of instrument that would have used the venues to bleed George the third would have been an instrument coming out of a Lancet case of this kind this is the George the third period Lancet cases made of silver these things contain a number of thumb lancets what they do when they bleed people was to put a ligature around the arm the upper part so that the veins become very prominent in the in the at the elbow and then the thumb Lancet would be made to cut the vein along the length of the thing there was another way of drawing blood which was also used to treat the saying the practice of leeching leeches would have been applied directly to the head probably to the temple region they would have brought them in taken them out of their special pots which have a special holes in them to keep them from coming out they would confine them to a region of the head with some kind of glass a vessel like a like a glass cutting device and once the leech started feeding they could remove the the the cup and the leeches would stay there for 20 to 30 minutes but they bled what can you continue to flow for four hours this was very widely used for treatment of insanity for four centuries George did not have a good relationship with his 15 children he could only bring himself with great difficulty to allow his daughters to marry and they for Longley addressed their letters to their brothers from the nunnery he regarded them all with a protective but passionate affection and called them all for Delia's his sons however proved less easy to govern most of them liked the high life and they had the knack of incurring public hatred for their sins of gambling debauchery and drunkenness in particular the public took against George Prince of Wales who successes were to say the least extreme he'd accumulated deaths of around a quarter of a million pounds by the time he was 23 and the same year he secretly married his Catholic mistress a winner mrs. Fitzherbert from the moment George's sons entered society their reckless extravagances and their course on brutal habits increased public sympathy for the aging king whose weak mind seemed to be further endangered by the wanton behavior of his dissolute sons in particular the King had viewed the development of his eldest son the Prince of Wales with great distaste he disapproved strongly of the princes demands for his own household something he could not refuse when the Prince reached 21 deep down he may have loved him as a son but he hated him as an heir the prince was 26 when the Kings madness really appeared and he was desperate to take over [Music] in October 1788 the King talked faster and faster and never slept the Prince of Wales was sent for and the king tried to throttle him George the Third's death was expected and the Prince set up two nights in a row waiting for the succession fully dressed and resplendent but the King didn't die instead they put him in a straightjacket under the strict instructions of the mad doctor a psychiatrists were then called the Reverend dr. Frances Willis Willis used a mixture of traditional physical treatments for madness that's to say blisters and cupping and above all emetics he was a great believer in tartar emetic which was a way of producing vomiting and he also believed in physical restraint so he was the first person who used what was called a restraining chair upon him Willis said that his way with treating the insane was to break them in like horses you had to tame the insane as though they were like wild beasts now of course a lot of people were absolutely horrified at this idea this was no way to treat a king you couldn't put a king in a straitjacket that was like treason the madness of George the third had political repercussions because waiting in the wings was his eldest son George both the prince and the politicians who were in opposition stood to benefit from the king being formally declared mad one would get the power and the other would get the throne so the supporters of the Prince of Wales included various doctors who if you like had a vested interest in playing down Georgian thirds health in playing down the prospect of a cure in calling for a Regency because they would then benefit from the new regime whereas William Pitt who was prime minister and was very loyal to draw 2/3 had an interest in finding doctors who would stress the likely and impending cure of the king despite young Georgia's hopes that he might become king or that the very least the Regency would be declared George the third began to recover from his madness Willis's methods were recognized as having worked and Queen Charlotte was once again allowed to return to the apartments in which they'd lived I think it's marvelous that when George the third recovered everyone celebrated they had medals they had parties that had firework displays and I think that's very good it was saying well this episode happened and now it's over and we've got our King back and everything's going to be alright I think a more modern perspective of course would be to see him as vulnerable and to wonder if it was going to happen again and obviously to think about replacing him as any modern Executive Committee would do if someone had any form of breakdown despite the celebrations George the third never really recovered and the year later in 1789 he became for the first time an object of public sympathy King George the Third's illnesses that first appeared in 1765 seemed over the years to become progressively worse as the stress of ruling the country increasing it of its toll one event more than any other is said to have tipped him over the edge the loss of the American colonies the jewel in his crown certainly he never got over what he saw as his major tragedy in 1788 his behavior and appearance became to worrying for secrecy for the first time the thought wrecks Noster in sonnet our king is mad was written down by 1789 the sad mad and injured king became for the first time in his life an object of sympathy and respect his virtues were suddenly appreciated his natural dignity and his frugality made a strong contrast to the behavior of his sons this newfound popularity was strengthened by the French Revolution the republicanism of the French gave the British sovereign even more support at long last the wheel of fortune seemed to turn in George's favour he became the first Hanoverian monarch to command respect some leaders gain in popularity after a mistake for example President Kennedy after the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs actually increased in popularity people like to think that even this very talented guy could make a mistake and they liked him for it George the third who'd never been a fantastically popular King became far more popular after people heard about him going through such a bad time with his illness and his madness he began to age and in the years that followed he cheated on the verge of a twilight world of similitudes dementia by 1801 he became a figurehead he stopped interfering in politics and in the public's mind he ceased to be associated with government policy from 1802 until 1811 when George became increasingly mad every care was taken to shield him from the storms of office and from the wild behavior of his children most particularly from his eldest son who was to inherit the throne George the fourth constitutionally the monarchy did not see its position dramatically deteriorates during the last decades of George the Third's reign but the political practices of the age was such that politics increasingly took place with the Kings role being less central not least because during the Napoleonic Wars the ministers had to plan for war and had to run an increasingly complex government system with a monarch who was ailing and then with his success of the Prince Regent subsequently George the fourth who was not noted for his dedication to the business of kingship George the Third's last part of madness from which he never recovered was in 1810 and a Regency was finally declared in 1811 the Prince of Wales finally took the reins of power for more than 10 years queen charlotte and the king had lived apart she died alone @q in 1818 two years later the king himself died at Windsor Castle his final years being little more than a fog of distant memories George Arthur's last bouts of madness began in 1810 and the Regency was finally declared in 1811 and he lived on a further nine years a sad but almost romantic figure he grew a long white beard he was completely blind he was delirious he was deaf and we have little portraits of him painted by dyrus at the time sitting banging away at a harpsichord that he probably couldn't hear and he's interesting of course that Beethoven was doing exactly the same thing in Germany here was a king who had turned into a completely self-enclosed ancient figure almost as though Shakespeare's King Lear had finally come alive George is an old man who's a tired man and he goes completely insane in 1810 so the last 10 years of his life really is tragic he's blind is old he's quite in serving he's living in the past and he spends his time you remember he spends his time playing the harpsichord he plays some handle his favorite composer he tells people who come to listen to him but this was a favorite piece of the late King when he was alive and his beard grows down to his waist he walks around all day in a purple dressing-gown Winsor talking to the ghosts of the past I suppose talking to north still and talking to beauty and thinking about Sherlock it's a very sad very long very slow to come [Music] the idea of a nation's ruler going insane is a frightening concept certainly George the Third's illness must have had an impact on our founding fathers as they created the Constitution and choosing an electoral system over a monarchy and creating safeguards against the misuse of power [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: DocSpot

Views: 222,093

Rating: 4.6369863 out of 5

Keywords: King George III, England, Europe, America, United States, American Revolution, Revolutionary War, 1776, George Washington, King, Queen, Royal, Royalty, Monarch

Id: xNQ-Nscr-oc

Length: 45min 28sec (2728 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018