{"id":885,"date":"2010-08-15T03:40:03","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T03:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/?page_id=885"},"modified":"2013-01-11T18:33:08","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T18:33:08","slug":"king-george-iii-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/?page_id=885","title":{"rendered":"King George III"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"King<\/a>

King George III - Source: http:\/\/www. guide- to- castles- of- europe. com\/ king- george-iii .html<\/p><\/div>\n

George III<\/strong> ruled Britain for fifty nine years.\u00a0 He was dubbed \u201cFarmer George\u201d by satirists.\u00a0 American Revolutionaries called him a tyrant although history will show he was a man of the people.\u00a0 George William Frederick was born the 4th of June 1738 and died January 29th, 1820.<\/p>\n

Upon his\u00a0eighteenth birthday his grandfather George II offered him St. James Palace but guided by his mother and her confident Lord Bute he remained at home where his mother continued to influence him to adopt a rigid moral standard.\u00a0 In 1759 George fell in love with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond but once again with Lord Bute\u2019s insistence George abandoned marriage plans.\u00a0 In 1760 George II died suddenly and George ascended to the throne.<\/p>\n

The early years of George\u2019s reign were marked by political instability.\u00a0 Much of this stemmed from political disagreement over the prosecution of the Seven Years War.\u00a0 In May of 1762 the Whigs lost control of Parliament and the Scottish Tory Lord Bute became Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately Bute\u2019s enemies began to discredit him by spreading rumors that he was having an affair with the King\u2019s Mother.\u00a0 John Wilkes a member of Parliament published the now infamous paper North Britian<\/em> that exploited anti Scottish sentiment.\u00a0 Wilkes was charged with seditious liable for his political attacks on Lord Bute and the King.<\/p>\n

In 1763 King George issued the Royal Proclamation that sought to create a boundary line between the colonists and the Native American population.\u00a0 The intent was to reduce the costs of fighting frontier battles with the Indians in America.\u00a0 This same year when the Treaty of Paris was concluded ending the French and Indian War, Lord Bute was forced to resign as a consequence of the scandals surrounding him.\u00a0 George Grenville became the new\u00a0Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Grenville very quickly exacerbated Britain\u2019s relationship with her American colonies when he past the Stamp Act in 1765 to raise revenue to reduce the deficit caused by defending the colonies during the French and Indian War.\u00a0 Grenville could have chosen Ben Franklin\u2019s land bank and national currency plan whereby the British would run the land bank and collect interest payments rather than raise taxes, however;\u00a0Grenville chose to pass the Stamp Act instead.\u00a0 The King became exasperated with Grenville over the Stamp Act and tried to encourage William Pitt the Elder to become Prime Minister.\u00a0 Pitt refused and King George settled for Lord Rockingham who repealed the hated Stamp Act.<\/p>\n

It was Lord North\u2019s government that through a series of decisions intended to assuage American opinion which triggered the American Revolution.\u00a0 First, Lord North began by passing the Tea Act of 1773 that actually reduced the price of East India Tea to a price below that of John Hancock\u2019s smuggled Dutch tea.\u00a0 Hancock and Samuel Adams\u00a0created the Boston Tea Party and taxation without representation as a response to the Tea Act.\u00a0 Lord North determined that the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor was a criminal act and passed legislation known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts which General Thomas Gage lobbied Parliament to pass.\u00a0 This series of acts essentially closed the port of Boston.<\/p>\n

Up to this point the King had hoped for a peaceful political solution despite his skepticism of Parliament\u2019s plans for the colonies.\u00a0 His behavior was far less ruthless than other monarchs of his time.\u00a0 Recent research has indicated that King George was essentially blameless in causing the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

In 1778 France signed a Treaty of Friendship with the American colonies which placed England back in a state of war with France.\u00a0 As the war continued its rising costs led to increased opposition.\u00a0 In 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered at the siege of York Town.\u00a0 This effectively ended the American Revolution although no formal treaty was signed until the Treaty of Paris in 1783.<\/p>\n

Not long after the end of the American Revolution King George\u2019s health began to deteriorate.\u00a0 He suffered from mental illness which today has been defined as a blood disease\u00a0known as porphyria.<\/p>\n

The French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte also occurred during George\u2019s reign.\u00a0 In 1800 the British and Irish Parliaments signed the Act of Union to create the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

By the end of 1811 King George had become insane and was replaced by his son George as Royal Regent for the rest of his life.\u00a0 When George III died he was succeeded by his son George IV.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution<\/em>.\u00a0 Bailyn, Bernard.\u00a0 The Belknap Press of Harvard University.\u00a0 Cambridge Mass.\u00a0 1990<\/span><\/p>\n

The Radicalism of the American Revolution<\/em>.\u00a0 Wood, Gordon S.\u00a0 Alfred A. Knopf.\u00a0 New York, NY.\u00a0 1992<\/span><\/p>\n

The Works of Edmund Burke Volumes I-II.<\/em>\u00a0 Burke, Edmund.\u00a0 Little, Brown and Company Boston, Mass.\u00a0 1865<\/span><\/p>\n

George III of the United Kingdom – Wikipedia the free encyclopedia <\/span>http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 George III ruled Britain for fifty nine years.\u00a0 He was dubbed \u201cFarmer George\u201d by satirists.\u00a0 American Revolutionaries called him a tyrant although history will show he was a man of the people.\u00a0 George William Frederick was born the 4th … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":35,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-885","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/885\/revisions\/887"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithrebellion1765.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}