George III
His Social Background
He was the first son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta. King George III was born in 1738 and ruled from 1760 until 1820, the year he died. In 1761 he married Charlotte of Mecklinburg-Strelitz and had fifteen children, nine sons and six daughters, with her. King George III ascended to the throne after his grandfather, George II, died in 1760. His father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died in 1751, never ascended to the throne. Ruling the Great Britain was not easy because King George III suffered from porphyria, a disease that causes mental problems, and so his reign was occasionally disrupted, e.g. in 1765. (Britannia, "King Goerge III")
His reign
His reign was unstable for he frequently changed his ministry. From October 1760 to February 1770 he had six separate ministries. Before he became king, the country had actually been governed under 40 years of stability with a one-party system of Whig patronage and court favourism. Improving the previous government under King George II, King George III accepted oppositional politics according to the Torie virtue. However, this opposition was only a fake. As a matter of fact, King George III was permanantly accused of corruption and of acting secretly and illigitimately. He did not accept any oppositions and thus, e.g. prohibited the freedom of press. Everyone who wrote something against the English government was immediately presecuted. Consequently, journalists had no other choice than use caricatures and further indirect allusions to cricize the king.
Problems
First problems arose in his early reign when the Seven Years War was over and the Peace of Paris was signed in 1763 ceding French territory to England. Thus, England acquired a territory making its Empire grow larger. The question was then how to manage this new territory. King George III tried to introduce an illigitimate imposition on taxes on its the American colonies though the Stamp Act of 1766 and the Declaratory Act in March 1766. Critiques in England and from the America colonies strongly disagreed with this decision reproaching King George III of corruption and betrayal. The defence against the tax introduction resulted in the loss of the American colonies.
Revolution
Under King George III a new understanding of gender roles developed. His pregnant wife Charlotte launched this revolution when she employed a male midwife to assist her in delivery. New opportunities like shopping, walking through gardens and going to operas and theatres changegender roles a lot as well with the result that men and women gradually socialized more and more. Critques blamed the king for a moral decline because of the illegitimacy and prenuptial pregnancies by 1760 among especially poorer people. Funnily, the new gender understanding was satirized in a male pregnancy.
End of his reign
King George III's reign ended on January 29, 1820, at Windsor Castle when his disease broke out. By this day he had become blind, deaf and mad.
Bibliography
Cody Forman, Lisa. Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-19-954140-9.
Britannia. "George III (1760-1820 AD)", Britannia: America's Gateway to the British Isles Since 1996, ed. Britannia.com, LLC. 2007 [1].