As the protests in the colonies spread, Lords Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Elder expressed opposition to taxing the colonies as impractical, arguing that the distance and difficulty in making collections was too great. Parliament then proceeded to pass more tax laws. Though the Stamp Act was repealed, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act in 1766, stating the colonies were subordinate to Parliament and subject to British Law. Claims of “no taxation without representation!” rang out in Boston, Massachusetts, and eventually other colonial cities.

But in the colonies, the Stamp Act was met with outrage, contempt and, for some tax collectors, violence. King George agreed with the reasoning and supported the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765. He reasoned that since the colonies had benefited from the outcome of the war and British troops were needed in North America to protect them, they should pay for it. With the Empire deeply in debt at the end of the Seven Years' War, Grenville looked to the American colonies as a source of revenue. In 1763, George Grenville succeeded Bute as King George’s prime minister. However, due to his Scottish background and belief in King George III's divine right to rule, Bute was maligned by other members of Parliament and eventually forced to resign due to strong criticism from the press and his purported involvement in a sex scandal involving George’s mother. During the resulting Seven Years' War, George III was closely advised by his prime minister Lord Bute, who kept the young, inexperienced monarch isolated from key members of Parliament. Since 1754, Britain and France had been engaged in a border skirmish along the frontier in North America that began when a British colonial militia, let by Lieutenant George Washington, attacked French Fort Duquesne. Though wed on the day they met, the couple enjoyed a 50-year marriage and had 15 children together.īut in addition to the crown, George inherited an ongoing world war, religious strife and changing social issues. A year later, he married Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In 1760, George's grandfather suddenly died, and the 22-year-old became king. Shy and Inexperienced, George Becomes King James Place, but Lord Bute convinced him to stay at home to live with his domineering mother, who instilled in him her strict moral values. When George turned 18, his grandfather invited him to live at St. Three weeks later the 12-year-old was made Prince of Wales by his grandfather, George II, putting him in line to inherit the throne. When George’s father died in 1751, George inherited the title Duke of Edinburgh. Acutely shy and reserved in his youth, George was strongly influenced by his primary mentor, Scottish nobleman John Stuart, Third Earl of Bute, who helped the young prince overcome his shyness and advised him on many personal and political matters. Instructed in a wide range of subjects, he showed a particular interest in the natural sciences.

Young George was educated by private tutors, and by age 8 he could speak English and German and would soon learn French. At the time, it seemed unlikely that George William Frederick would one day become King George III, the longest-ruling monarch English before Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. Early Lifeīorn prematurely on June 4, 1738, to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the sickly prince wasn’t expected to live and was baptized the same day. Ultimately, recurring bouts of insanity led Parliament to enact regency to his son, and George III lived his final years with sporadic periods of lucidity, until his death in 1820. In 1788, illness brought on a mental breakdown, but he briefly recovered, regaining popularity and admiration for his virtue and steady leadership through the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. A member of the Hanover dynasty, which ruled England for almost two centuries, George III was the King of Great Britain during some of the nation’s most tumultuous years, including those of the American Revolutionary War.

Family tree queen victoria george iii