“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” This, the colonists believed, was a clear example of despotic behavior. So… was George III a tyrant? By enumerating the ways a monarchy can go wrong, George III might have been writing a series of reminders to himself, and could have called this essay (in today’s words) “How Not to Mess Up Being King.” The Americans assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 would probably have rolled their eyes at young George III’s youthful assertion of his good intentions, as Arthur Burns and Karin Wulf have suggested.
In reality, George III wasn’t much of a tyrant, he was in fact a quite conscientious King for his day. He was a ridiculously conscientious monarch and decent man who did his best to serve the UK’s concept of monarchy. It is a testament to his good nature that the King, then a youth, held neither bitterness nor resentment for this decision, devoting himself fully to Princess Charlotte, the ‘better match’, and his future Queen.To his fifteen children, he was both demanding and loving. George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death in 1820. It was a political union—the two met for the first time on their wedding day—but a fruitful one; Queen Charlotte gave birth to 15 children. With this considered, the King’s approach is understandable.“I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.”Popular with his people throughout life, though now mocked in death, George III embodied the spirit of the nation like no other before him, serving as a stalwart bastion around whom his subjects could rally in the shadow of Napoleonic aggression. Further Reading: Parliament was really the guilty party in the sense that they would not allow the American colonies representatives. Fully devoted to England, George III was the first of the Hanoverian monarchs to speak English as his first language.With his fascination for architecture, it is little wonder, then, why Prince Charles named him as the British monarch whom he most respects. King George III was called a tyrant by the founders because England's capital investment into the colonies was huge. Tyranny can only be imposed, George III wrote, by “violence & an arm’d force,” but this creates a significant risk for the sovereign. Because of this large investment, he wanted to mitigate the losses through fiscal policy and heavily taxed the colonies. He is the good ‘tyrant’. His father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, had died in 1751, making George the heir to his grandfather, George III. Kings should be careful not to listen to advice that might encourage them to “use Arbitrary power” for the sake of preserving their power. Was King George III a tyrant when it came to America? He famously married a series of six wives in his search for political alliance, marital bliss and a healthy male heir. A commendable will, yet concerning for many of his ministers, who feared this strategy of forcing ‘unconditional surrender’ was creating further division between Great Britain and her American territories, doing more harm than good.His support for the slave trade, too, is an unfortunate blemish on his reign, especially so as its abolition was gaining momentum in all echelons of British society under his rule; it was a great deal because of the King’s opposition that William Pitt the Younger delayed his plan for its abolition, though ultimately the Slave Trade Act 1807, which prohibited the slave trade across the Empire, was signed into law under George III’s reign.