The Mad Genius Of George III: Britain's Longest Reigning King | Mad King George | Timeline

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] 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 handle 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 [Music] that manic Monarch so hauntingly captured by Madame Tussaud can finally be revealed [Music] [Applause] [Music] [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 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 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 though I do not mean to decline giving Matt 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 this poignant and surprising letter has remained buried for 200 years now it is just one piece of a fascinating new historical jigsaw 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 and the round Tower is built on the site where will in the Conqueror founded the castle in 1070 and the outside walls around town were built in the mid 12th century super very sensible and very secure place to keep papers nowhere safer nowhere safer what's happening here at the top of these 104 Stone steps its history of Swords 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 is it taking so long but here in this fortified Royal vault it's groundbreaking never before as 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 I'll give 1780 and 26. oh absolutely I think that's the idea exactly and the John Dory in the second course we've got some impressive roasted poultry starting with a pea fowl but he seems quite fond of the peacock or two 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 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 it's a short note from Queen Charlotte to Lady Charlotte Finch the governors with a little paper just labels Prince Alfred's hair cut during his illness 1782 at the lower Lodge I think Windsor then a lot of Prince Alfred Little Prince Alfred who died a little golden lock of his hair and sewn into it and for her to remember him by and thanking her for looking after him what does it feel like to come across something like something like this as your well when you just arrived here sorry um I mean it's incredibly touching but actually it's rather shocking how bright and shiny and now this look of hair looks you know it could just have been cut off somebody's head so it brings things it brings things alive while really being very moving thinking about the death of a small child with golden curls 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 [Music] household ledgers the Kings 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 is under footman was and how much he was paid or his relationship with the prime minister they will both be there and curious enough you may find there is a connection between those two things this was done absolutely reserved Mission and um authority of the queen who herself has approved this exercise and is Keen to make these collections available my main GCT Professor Ed burn King's College London the queen decided to open the whole Georgian papers project herself Mr in Blackford director of the science museum with the British and American academics involved 100 Institute William and Mary College and Mr Peter Barber I have a map collections of the British Library um the emergency we've laid out some items here in the library exploring the entire collection will take several years but some of the early finds were presented for the launch including the Schoolboy essay on kingship this is a essay by George III discussing his role in relation to Parliament the supreme power in England is divided into two branches the legislative vested in the king 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 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 there's a documents which have not been seen and will really help transform an understanding of this in this period [Music] 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 the Prince of Wales was writing that a little after eight between Q Bridge and the six Milestone when a messenger told him an accident had happened to the king the prince returned to Q ordered his attendance 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 and 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 and there are some useful tips for a young Hanoverian King convinced this nation that you are not only an Englishman born and bred but that you were 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 and his interests are English his culture is English the United Kingdom the technical phrase we 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 and then he warns about the national debt which if not reduced well 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 a 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 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 um aspect to him that he likes going out writing with his children Ram Windsor and asking Farmers you know how to do well friend where are you going hey what's your name hey where do you live hey hey and it in Windsor he'll walk around the town and or pop in on people he understood that it was best to appear to be a perfectly ordinary human being who happened to be filling the office of King 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 bought 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 idol moment the digitization of his personal archive allows us intimate access to a deep thinker with a good brain an 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 and 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 as a problem and it's this wonderful the clear handwriting even those people who are not Specialists I think will be able to read pretty straightforwardly uh it is very clear isn't it 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 reuning under the Yoke of despotism he's very clearly putting himself on the side of the Angels so yes he's considering himself here as someone who's not going to be that kind of mom because he's understanding how to avoid being a despot how to be a good and patriotic uh King but there was one place where George III was seen as a despot America yes or no and I could use to take the enemy out is that true I love artillery don't you [Music] 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 I didn't need a fairly tall guy to work the other side of the gun to be my loader what began with protests like the Boston Tea Party escalated Into Revolution the Americans chose to take things personally look at all these volunteers the bad guy was the king [Music] they relished 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 right the left rest everybody will step into the gun your British are not really coming today huh you know George III was a a mean nasty Monarch and he was imposing taxes out of his own selfishness and then he went crazy you know so he said he's a handy villain for people to have guys you want to cover your ears Now's the Time fire [Music] it's 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 and the Royal archives reveal his compulsive interest in every aspect of the war effort you really see it um 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's saying the we're going to need at least about 38 000 troops over there and he lists where they'll be stationed and distributed and it has such details like the need for 52 000 blankets and 4 200 watch codes wagons and harness for 68th Battalion viz 277 wagons and 1117 sets of harness and we tended to think about George as this kind of aloof figure who's who was above the phrase above politics uh but when you look at his papers when you look at at his interactions with his ministers he's very much engaged in the operations of government the king kept a close eye on what the American Rebels and their French allies were up to and 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 oh it's very surprised to find it in the king's handwriting because it tells us he didn't have a secretary and it also shows his voracious interest in every detail of this war [Music] 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'd 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 blinded people when they looked at it it was a mark of we've made it as a civilization and a culture and you see in that moment sort of the desecration of Royal Authority you see 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 the image of Saddam Hussein when he was pulled down in 2003 in in Iraq and all of that lead was melted down into 42 088 musket balls and even to this day they're finding the musket balls that came from King George's statue you know on Revolutionary War battlefields so the king ended up being fired back at the king's man that's exactly right yeah the ultimate insult 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 recognizing over this part here isn't it yes and you never normally see letters that are this messy and 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 moments George had absorbed all the official information coming into the government but in the Royal archives there's some tantalizing unofficial sources too a private network of secret agents reporting directly to the king services it's quite a big increase it was only 32. and this is actually was quite a revelation to me uh he had a spy who wrote him regularly called aristocus in this particular letter uh our stockers says you've been seen walking around the Queen's Garden in Disguise at night time [Music] and that the French are planning to assassinate you while you're doing that and these letters are entirely unpublished uh they're not mentioned in the major biographies of Georgia III so we've come across a sort of Georgian James Bond yes uh with the difference that aristocus was in his late 60s and uh that he was clearly a lot less agile than Bond also unlike Bond he keeps having to ask to be paid Britain's defeat in the American war was a bitter reverse for the king America is lost must we fall beneath the blow but George swallowed his pride and three years later he graciously welcomed the first American ambassador to Britain 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 [Music] lady Charlotte Finch and they're talking about the setting up the Royal Nursery she's saying that she's allowed to have two days off um to be at Liberty but um when she's when she's in the nursery she's just um think of the children almost as her own which is quite a modern thought I think in his first year as King George had drawn up his own shortlist of potential Brides Charlotte came top and a proposal was dispatched he was 23 she was 17. a princess of the German duchy of Mecklenburg strelitz he sent an Envoy to fetcher 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 terrible journey and a rough Seas The Crossing write English but the king and she got on like a house on fire 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 firstborn Prince just six weeks old I hope when I come to town will be dressed in his frock The King and I embrace a pretty dear little man you are affectionate Charlotte 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 sixteenth of an inch [Music] was to create a model royal family and to make sure people saw them too they were very fertile couple 15 children born from 1762 to 1783. so that's quite a tough schedule for Queen Charlotte 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 it's and James's Palace the Queen's house was home and 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 [Music] foreign relation to the history of science King George III's scientific instruments were presented to King's College London and they are now on display in the science museum early Northerns famous clock which was in Buckingham house library was given to them for his 27th birthday was regarded really as one of the finest clocks in the collection it does work it will chime in just a few minutes I should think this astronomical clock had pride of place on the desk in Georgia 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 around the British Isles the movement of the planets and the phases of the moon you have things too from Georgia said well we will be George yes which is going to be redisplayed in more central part of the museum very soon thank you and here we have what is rightly considered a landmark and astronomy and navigation this is account of watching the transit of Venus in Richmond Park demonstrating his interest in astronomy and science really contemporary developments of the day the king's document described what was going to happen when the planet Venus was seen to pass between the Earth and the Sun time to the nearest 30 seconds and it's uncanny to realize that George III was directly contemplating the 21st century morally speaking none now living will see the same phenomenon again which will only happen again in 1874 and again 2004. [Music] George was so excited that he had the king's Observatory built in time for the occasion in Richmond Park [Music] on the day itself he and the queen went to the top [Music] though today it's in the midst of restoration we can retrace their steps to the cupola where the roof could be opened to the sky here in the cupola is where the king and queen actually watched the 1769 Transit of Venus though not on this particular telescope 250 years later it's all in full working order let's wind this handle and suddenly whether it help from some WD-40 the aperture opens to reveal the Heavens to the Royal gaze and 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 and 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 3rd 1769. using a reflecting telescope the King was the first to spot the outline of Venus just as people did on June the 8th 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 his Studios he collects great sheafs of paper diagrams scientific materials he is processing knowledge on 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 and I think people have argued that that by the end of the 19th century you just can't know about it in those days you could know about geology farming astronomy uh an interest in science and interest in all sorts of other things and I think he I mean he I imagine he'd been quite fun to have dinner with I don't know but in his on his good days obviously George III was always on the move his constant journeying between his palaces in London q and Windsor exasperated his family and caught Queen Charlotte wrote to her brother alive if you can call it life is nothing but her paradoxically George never went very far never beyond the South Coast no further north than Worcester [Music] 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 Sapphire at the tender age of 14. George's papers include secret instructions for cook with crucial advice treat any locals you find with respect 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 isn't going to go around the world in a show that's not the job the king does but he does know who is doing that and he's reading what they're writing and he's 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 George's only seafaring was the odd day trip to review the fleet as we see here with the king in his bluegarter 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 [Music] for the first half of his Reign George III was intimately and often bitterly involved in domestic politics this was the 1780 general election here in the archives we even find his private Intelligence on the likely voting habits of each MP a celebrity candidate John Wilkes were the most famous radicals of the 18th century standing and they're looking for the fight 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 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 recalled the king's experience of one of the most important political crises of of the 18th century indeed of longer so we were able to trace in this cosmotance on a virtually day by day and even hour by hour basis the King was involved in increasingly touchy horse trading to get the leading politicians of the day to form a new government it reached a crisis on March the 23 1783. Lord enough not having heard from you since the directions I gave you yesterday I must desire you will come instantly it's a summoning of uh one of the key negotiators in this process of trying to form a new ministry and we can see here that the 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. with his time standing 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 can have several letters going back and forth in the course of a single day late into the night early in the morning as as people have actually called in to see them on and this is a sunlight as well 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 and then he's writing off to Mr Pitt William Pitt uh the future Prime Minister who will be his next and last throw that dice here 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 has finally ended Queen's house March the 23rd 1783 48 minutes past 8 PM that's sort of dinner time on a Sunday night in March that's right and that's gone off to Mr Peter 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 uh for the king uh where he just wants to make sure everybody knows where we stand he's saying right to the Duke of Portland and Lord North the Duke of Portland I shall not give him any further trouble and Lord North was yet again in the doghouse Lord North must therefore see that all negotiation is at an end 35 minutes past 10 pm the king felt let down by scheming politicians there was no point he thought in going on just how serious situation we've now got to becomes apparently we look at the next documents in the sequence which gives me a bit of a free song when you read it 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 gosh so 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 um the most able to work in the National interest and what this speech is basically saying is I failed I mean what we see here he's he's really troubled here isn't it yes there's a lot of redrafting and Crossing out going on this is written the state of high education I think you do get a sense of of the troubled mind the blotches and the the scrolling and the scratchings out and we begin to come to the end of the line and this is the key passage I am therefore resolved to resign my crown and all the dominions are pertaining 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 head with the eighth speech I think in terms of the the emotions that that are on display here and again some ironies in this document because these electoral dominions he's talking about here I never his roots he feels are in England this is an exile but on reflection George didn't sail off to Hanover after all he had plenty of Family Matters to sort out to amazing this whole left column is the prince Regent's dinner and more meat and things on the sideboard 13 loins of veal but there's something sausages yeah a large cake on roasted yeah or two 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 by the time he turned 19 the prince was already going off the rails as the king reported to his prime minister 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 the 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 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 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 Lord North didn't disappoint this time he'd ordered up the cash roughly three quarters of a million 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 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 all this was perhaps a key trigger for the King's first major breakdown in 1788 and his incarceration at Windsor and Q sometimes in a straight jacket 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 and the statements by lots of people who who saw him the it wasn't just that 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 uh sexually inappropriate at times all of those things would suggest the diagnosis now that we would call Mania or hypomania the aquarie 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 5th 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 we discovered an intriguing letter from the King to his second son expressing concern about an old soldier with health problems of his own my dear Frederick I desire you will send the enclosed by this night's post I am sorry to hear the Grand Marshal has had two fresh Strokes of apoplexy as I fear he will not last long 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 believe me ever my dear Frederick your most affectionate father George R Windsor December 28 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 society and you do have moments of calmness in the storm um that certainly happens as well on his recovery he went on a visit to of all places a mad house in Richmond where he discussed the merits of straight jackets as is a query recorded 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 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 Mr Pitt humbly begs leave to acquaint your majesty that he finds the Physicians thinking of the greatest consequence for your Majesty's recovery to change the air fatigue in the meantime ought to be avoided foreign [Music] so George set off with the family to Weymouth endorset 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 that 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 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 popular every morning he'd climb into a bathing machine just like this one and it'll 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 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 bands struck up God saved the king [Music] there were long rides through the Dorset Countryside too farmer George as he was known relished swapping notes on crops and livestock King loved Weymouth come rain or shine and Weymouth loved the king his family had other ideas while his sons spend as little time here as possible preferring the raffish charms of Brighton his daughters had little Joys as Princess Mary complained this place is more dull and stupid than I can find words to express the more his sons went their own way the closer the king clung to his unmarried daughters their one Solace was the bolt hole 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 someone to escape Court politics and her erratic husband so much she could pursue a life of her own so she bought the small estate just below Windsor Castle and the retreat here as often as possible with her daughters to what she called her little Paradise 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 while away the time [Music] 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 turn to whoever was near which was of course the Aquarius a court 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 a few Georgian documents in this great archive as human as intensely personal as the correspondence of Princess Emilia 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 aquarie and Emilia was smitten my ever dearest and most beloved darling she wrote and oh God I am 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's buying the tea kettles and the silver and having them engraved here's her husband and so she can write to him on any matter what gives this a fair added poignancy is that Emilia's life was to be cut short at 27. she had tuberculosis she's near death in extreme pain and this love for Fitzroy is her way of Rising above that 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 Jules 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 [Music] October the 25th 1810 was the actual day of the king's Jubilee 50 years on from that momentous ride near Q to Mark the occasion George appeared at court on the arm of the queen it was his last public engagement he was now almost blind and had to stop writing foreign visits to Amelia had been emotional she was now fading on that Jubilee Day her brothers were summoned to make their farewells on November the 2nd Emilia succumbed to the tuberculosis [Music] King was destroyed 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 Emilia 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 Emilia's property to The Prince and one of his brothers they were to be residiary legatees for their beloved sister the princess Emilia in lieu of me so Fitzroy is elbowed out for them it was just too um incendiary an issue 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 there Still Remains one point to be broke to him namely poor Emilia's will the ignorance of which may lead to very unpleasant conversations but events had overtaken them two days after Amelia's death the king had a relapse and had to be confined in a straight jacket once more his doctors were quizzed about his prospects the archives contained 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 phrase of his illness 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 the dear King taught much of his family with great affection he looks better than I have seen him after any one of his other illnesses but this time there would be no recovery foreign [Music] 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 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 ever more 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 Statesmen 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 Percival the king Percival noted mentioned is 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 Pitts first coming into office so that he could lay his hand at once upon anyone he added it's hard work historians get very excited about unseen documents it's extraordinary there's 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 so much yeah yes [Music] the lasting Legacy of George III is an enduring constitutional monarchy his advice to his own young Sons captures the essence of his vision 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 [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 138,921

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, british history, american history, colonial history, king george iii, george iii, british royalty, timeline, timeline world history, timeline channel, timeline world history documentaries

Id: U8nT454VR6Y

Length: 58min 42sec (3522 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022