WEBVTT - The Mad Tyrant, Hey Hey! 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:05.280 Hey, this is Dana. One quick reminder, Noble Blood is 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:07.920 on Patreon. If you love the show and want to 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:10.640 throw me some extra support, go to patreon dot com 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.200 slash Noble Blood Tales, where you can get access to 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:19.480 episode scripts and bibliographies, random comments, and behind the scenes material, 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.760 or just to say hi. But as always, the best 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.080 possible support for the show is just listening. I'm so 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:32.839 grateful that you do. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.440 of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:45.800 Listener discretion is advised. In the forties, there was a 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:51.159 young princess of Bavaria named Alexandra. By all accounts, Alexandra 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:53.640 was brilliant. She would go on to write a number 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:58.520 of books and published translations, and she was beautiful. But 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:03.160 in her early twenties some peculiarities began to reveal themselves. 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:09.200 Alexandra always obsessed with ideas of purity and cleanliness. Dressed 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:14.360 only in white, she walked gingerly in her slippers, turning 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.839 sideways to go through doorways, and she avoided touching most things. 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:23.040 Why was she being so careful, her family asked when 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.360 they noticed the fear behind her eyes. When she narrowed 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.600 her elbows to make her way down a hallway. The 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:35.160 explanation for her behavior, Alexandra said, was quite simple. She 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.520 had swallowed a grand piano as a child, a full 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:44.840 sized grand piano made of glass, and now years later, 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:50.280 the glass piano was still inside her unbroken. That was 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:54.520 why she needed to move so carefully to protect her body, 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.880 because the glass grand piano was always at risk of 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:03.640 shattering inside of her. Though the quote unquote glass delusion 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.880 all but disappeared after the nineteenth century, for hundreds of 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.560 years up until then, it was a well documented phenomenon. 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.440 Descartes mentioned it, and it's included in the sixteen twenty 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:21.400 one medical book Anatomy of Melancholy. Princess Alexandra's case is 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:24.119 one of the most famous, no doubt, because of her 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:28.880 royal rank and also the poetic specificity of the grand 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:33.240 piano made of glass. But another famous royal was also 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.440 struck by the glass delusion, Charles the Six, who would 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.680 become King of France in the thirteen hundreds and whom 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.640 I covered in the podcast episode Charles the Beloved, the Mad, 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:49.520 the Fool, convinced that his body had transformed into glass 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:54.160 Charles would spend hours motionless in his bed, protected by 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.440 layers of blankets. When he had to go out into 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.480 the world, he did so with specially made iron ribs 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.960 built into his clothing to protect his organs that he 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.080 so believed might shatter with the most delicate of touches. 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.000 It's not a coincidence that the glass delusion seemed to 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.280 mostly attach itself to high ranking royals. At the time, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:24.119 it was diagnosed as melancholy, but modern psychotherapists have interpreted 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:29.600 the glass delusion as a manifestation of feeling vulnerable and fragile, 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.040 fully exposed by a position in the public eye, being 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:39.760 completely transparent and unable to protect oneself. The myth of 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:44.560 the mad monarch is an appealing one, the maccabre tragedy 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:49.160 of someone with wealth, power and privilege losing that one 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.760 thing that all of the above can't protect, their mind. 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:57.800 The mad monarch trope also emerges barely often in pop culture, 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:02.200 but usually with less tragedy. The pop culture version is 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.800 usually a despot, a mad king or queen who uses 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:10.760 their powers tyrannically and needs to be taken down. Perhaps 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:15.160 there's no historical figure that straddles that dichotomy more than 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:19.080 King George the Third, the Hanoverian King of England who 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.520 lost the American colonies, at least in the United States. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.680 When we learned about him, it's as a despot, the 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.800 tyrant king who greedily imposed taxes on his humble servants 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.960 while denying them representation. How easy it is then to 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.840 fold the historical truth of his insanity into that narrative. 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:44.320 The American colonists had to declare independence from the mad 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:48.640 King George the Third. The truth, if you can guess, 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.040 is a little more complicated, and unfortunately a lot sadder. 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.320 George the Third did lose the American colonies, although England, 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.520 being a parliamentary monarchy at the time, his role in 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.000 the affair was a little less active than I think 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.720 most American school children believe. And then, more than three 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:12.240 decades after that, George lost his mind. He became a 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.880 shell of his former self, wandering through a palace with 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:21.120 a long white beard, rambling incoherently forgetting the identities of 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:25.760 his loved ones and then forgetting himself. Treatments for his 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:30.520 mental illness ranged from leeches to straight jackets, and the 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.680 King of England's life ended bleakally a prisoner in his 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:38.760 own palace, the most powerful man in the country, with 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:44.479 absolutely no power anymore. I'm Danish Wortz, and this is 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:53.599 noble blood. Contrary to what you might expect, George the 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.320 Third was not the son of George the second. George 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.880 the Third was actually the king's grandson, the eldest boy 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.960 born to Frederick, the Prince of Wales. George the Third 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:09.240 had a dangerous and inauspicious early start in life. He 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.520 was born two full months early, dangerous enough in this 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.680 day and age of modern medical technological advancement. But in 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.280 seventeen thirty eight the palace was so ready for young 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:25.120 George to die that he was given an emergency baptism 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.080 the very day that he was born. But then, despite 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.880 it all, George survived. A few weeks later he was 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.679 given the public baptism befitting a member of the royal family. 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.120 George the First and George the Second were both Kings 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:44.120 of England who were born in Hanover with German as 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:48.040 their first language. George the Third would be the first 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:52.880 English monarch in living memory. Actually born in England as 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:55.680 a young man in direct line to the throne, George 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.000 was given a first rate education. He was the first 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.920 royal to study science formally, and his lessons touched on chemistry, astronomy, 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:08.520 and physics. There's actually some debate as to how intelligent 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.480 George the Third actually was growing up. One source I'll 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.600 be a buy it source with a grudge against the 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.640 Prince of Wales at the time, claimed that George the 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:21.280 Third couldn't read until he was eleven years old, but 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.440 more accurate reports are that by age eight he could 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.600 read and write in both English and German. In fact, 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.080 by most accounts, he was a healthy, smart enough child 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.840 who would grow into a relatively healthy, smart, if a 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.040 little prudish, and old fashioned young man. He was tall 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.760 and fair, with slightly bulging and prominent eyes. When he 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.440 was nervous, he spoke too fast, and he had a 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.560 keen interest in the mundane details of farming. He also 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.040 had the habit of saying hey, hey, at the end 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:59.480 of sentences. Most people liked him well enough, except his grandfather, 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:05.400 the Ing. The King viewed his grandson with suspicion and disappointment. 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.920 The only person that the King disliked more than his 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:14.160 grandson was his own son, Frederick. George the Second dreaded 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.760 the day that he would die and leave Frederick to 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.440 inherit the kingdom. Fortunately for him, that day never came. 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.440 In seventeen fifty one, Prince Frederick died suddenly from a 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:36.199 lung injury. George the Third, just thirteen years old, became 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.440 the heir apparent. Within three weeks, his grandfather made it 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.840 all formal. George the third was the new Prince of Wales. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:47.520 The King still didn't really like his grandson, but well, 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:49.760 now he didn't have a choice. He would have to 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:53.960 make do with him. Their relationship was, to say the 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.960 least tense as the fatherless George the Third grew older. 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.360 When George the third was a young man, he offered 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.520 his service to the military. I'll be a terror to 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:08.679 the enemy, He's quoted as saying, presumably not remembering that 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.520 he had absolutely no military experience. As the heir apparent 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.800 of the entire kingdom, and considering again the complete lack 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:22.640 of experience, his grandfather, the King politely declined the offer. 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:27.160 George the third was outraged. He started calling the King 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.240 the old man and said that he was ashamed to 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:34.760 be his grandson. It was perhaps the sort of youthful 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.040 rebellion that you can imagine from a fatherless boy of 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:44.800 ordinary ability but immense privilege. Another manifestation of youthful rebellion 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:48.719 for a prince falling in love with a commoner. When 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.880 he was twenty one, George the Third was besotted with 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:57.679 Lady Sarah Lennox, one of the notorious Lennox sisters. George's mentor, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.160 Lord Bute, was the most prominent voy against the match, 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:05.200 and George the Third begrudgingly agreed that he wouldn't be 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.080 able to marry her, but that didn't stop him from 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.120 waxing poetic about how much he loved her and how 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.559 miserable he was that he had been torn away from 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.200 a future with her. The King decided that he would 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.840 help his grandson find a nice German princess to marry. 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.719 The first two choices, from Dumstadt and Schwett, were eliminated 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:30.480 because both girls were reportedly stubborn and ill tempered. The 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.920 princess from Saxe Gotha was out of the question because 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:38.240 George had heard that she had an interest in philosophy gasp. 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.920 But before an appropriate match could be found, a seismic 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.720 shift occurred in young George's life. His grandfather, the King, died, 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.440 and at twenty two years old, George the Third was 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:59.800 the new king. First things first, he still needed a wife. 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.720 He casually tossed around the idea of marrying Sarah Lennox 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.840 now that he was the boss, but only half heartedly. Instead, 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.319 he made the respectable choice of Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz. 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.760 She was seventeen at the time, and no one claimed 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.480 that she was a great beauty, but the reports were 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.559 that she was sensible and amenable to the Anglican Church. 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.000 She and George met at three p m. One afternoon, 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.040 and that very day they were married at nine p m. 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.880 Two weeks after the wedding, the pair had a joint 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:36.640 coronation in Westminster Abbey, and the king purchased Buckingham House, 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:39.840 the palace out from which the modern day Buckingham Palace 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:45.280 would grow. By royal marriage standards, theirs was a rousing success. 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.200 George never took a mistress, and he and Charlotte had 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.680 fifteen children, twelve of whom which arrived through adulthood. It 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.280 turns out both he and Charlotte shared the love of 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:00.600 the domestic. They both adored music, and romanticized as rural 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:04.560 farm life. As King George the Third had the nickname 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.679 Farmer George, a persona which I have to assume was 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.080 at least in part helped by that way that he 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:12.600 liked to shout, hey, hey, at the end of sentences. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.640 That seems sort of farm really, doesn't it. But even 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.400 more than farm life, George loved his children and his family. 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.640 When his son Octavius died at age four, George the 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:27.920 Third wept, and when he recovered, he said, there will 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:30.760 be no heaven for me if Octavius is not there. 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.400 It would actually be George's siblings that disrupted his perfect 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.880 domestic fantasy. Early in his reign. He had nine of them, 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.480 and each seemed beset by unique tragedy or scandal. Within 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.640 the first few years of being king, two of George's 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:59.319 siblings died, one of appendicitis and one of tuberculosis. George's 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:02.880 favorite younger brother, his one time confidante and best friend, 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.280 had become a rake. As an adult. He was a troublemaker, 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.880 dabbling in opposition politics, drinking, and womanizing, a disgrace to 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:17.480 King George at court. This brother died suddenly in Monaco 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.600 and then another sister died, also of tuberculosis. His youngest sister, 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.120 Caroline Matilda, who had married the King of Denmark, was 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:32.160 arrested for adultery. Her lover, the doctor Struncy, was executed. 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.000 She wrote to her brother for help, and through political machinations, 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.640 George the Third was able to arrange for Caroline Matilda 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.000 to have a semi respectable retirement in Cell. But that 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:48.959 wasn't all. All of Georgia's siblings seemed insistent on causing 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:54.599 scandal without telling the king. George's younger brother, Henry, secretly 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.920 married a commoner, a widow. You have irretrievably ruined yoursel 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.000 of the King told his brother. After that embarrassment, in 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:08.559 seventy two, the King who passed the Royal Marriages Act, 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.160 which forbade any member of the royal family under twenty 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:16.920 five to get married without the monarch's explicit approval. If 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.880 you watched Season one of The Crown, this is the 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.800 origin of the conflict of Queen Elizabeth the Second not 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:27.320 allowing her younger sister Margaret to marry an older divorcee. 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:30.680 Of course, as soon as King George passed the Act, 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.920 another one of his younger brothers. William Henry came forward 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:39.480 and shyly admitted that for the past six years he 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:44.000 had actually been married secretly to a cordier's illegitimate daughter. 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:55.040 It was enough to drive anybody crazy. George's health struggles 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.000 began when he was twenty four, just two years after 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.600 he became king. One ofternoon in seventeen sixty two, he 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:07.000 started coughing. Breathing became difficult, and he complained of a 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:11.840 constant stitch in his side. The court doctors murmured worriedly 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.680 to themselves. The symptoms seemed to be similar to what 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.480 George's own father had died up without warning a decade ago. 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:24.160 Treatment would need to be aggressive. The King was blooded 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:28.760 seven times, prescribed asses milk and a laxative. The King 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.520 was also put on a regiment of cupping over the 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.480 next few months, during which a doctor would make a 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:38.440 small laceration and then use a warm cup to create 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:41.320 a vacuum over the wound to suck the blood out. 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:47.600 In case you weren't sure, it is extremely painful. George recovered, 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.960 but he suffered from insomnia and quickened pulse for the 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:55.640 next few years. Some people erroneously described this period as 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.520 his first bout of madness, but that's not correct. There 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:04.280 were no documented mental symptoms, just physical discomfort and even 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:16.400 more uncomfortable treatments. Documented mental illness would emerge for the 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.560 first time decades later, when George was fifty years old. 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.720 In the Intervening Period, George the Third defeated France in 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.200 the Seven Years War, which meant that Britain achieved global 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:31.280 primacy as a world power, but it came at a 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.240 heavy cost. The war had been expensive, and the cost 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:39.280 of it led Parliament to raise taxes on the American colonists. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.320 I'm sure you remember where all this goes. I hope 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.400 I'm not stating the obvious when I say, of course, 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:51.080 King George the Third was anti revolutionary, but his position 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:55.640 wasn't despotic or egocentric, or even uncommon in Britain at 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:59.440 the time. George wasn't a mad king trying to rule 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.600 the colony so he could rename them all George Land. 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:06.520 King George the Third was a rigid traditional man who 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.280 took the oath that he made during his coronation very seriously. 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.359 At the very least, he saw it as his duty 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:17.040 to defend Parliament's legal right to raise taxes whenever they 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:21.919 so chose. It was less about absolutism actually than protecting 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:27.080 the power of the parliamentary system. In Britain, anti revolutionary 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:31.280 sentiment was the middle of the road position, especially after 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.320 the story of the Boston Tea Party made its way 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:39.520 across the Atlantic Ocean. The rebellious colonists had destroyed a 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.720 ship's worth of property and violently tarred and feathered the 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:47.240 customs official. What had the customs official done wrong? He 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.639 was just trying to do his job. Most of the 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.840 British population saw the American rebels as incorrigible, and King 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.840 George the Third was fully committed to backing Parliament's decision 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.880 that Britain would take whatever action necessary to protect its 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:08.480 officials and its property. Long story short, they lost the 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.800 Revolutionary War, mostly for George the Third. It was just 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:17.359 a humiliation. Catherine the Great wrote at the time quote, 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.480 rather than have granted America her independence, as my brother monarch, 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.600 King George has done, I would have fired a pistol 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:28.800 at my own head. The guilt and anxiety after yielding 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:33.440 the colonies caused George the Third enormous angst. He drafted 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:37.399 an abdication speech, planning on resigning and then moving to 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:42.960 his family seat in Hanover, but he decided against giving it. Luckily, 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:47.159 the economic sting of the American Revolution healed quicker than 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.919 the emotional one for George. Under the Prime Minister William 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:54.600 Pitt the Younger, the country's finances bounced back, and so 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:57.359 George the Third tried to move on and put the 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:02.600 past behind him. In seven George meant face to face 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.880 with the ambassador of that new country, the United States. 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:10.800 The ambassador was a man named John Adams. I will 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.919 be free with you, King George, said to him. I 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:17.320 was the last to consent to the separation, But the 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.159 separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:23.879 always said, as I say now, that I would be 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.880 the first to meet the friendship of the United States 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:36.320 as an independent power. Life returned to relative normalcy for 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.320 King George the Third, A normal life meant for him. 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.960 He ate a spartan diet, exercised regularly, and even wrote 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:48.520 about botany under a pen name Ralph Robinson. And as 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:53.000 I mentioned before, he was incredibly domestic. To quote John 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:57.159 Cannon in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. One of 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:00.879 the remarkable features of George's way of life his comparative 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:05.600 lack of interest in travel. He never visited his Hanoverian dominions, 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:09.000 although they were, at least in theory, very dear to him. 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.680 He gloried in the name of Britain, but knew very 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:16.280 little about it. Scotland, Wales and Ireland were ignored, so 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.399 was most of England. The royal family visited Weymouth for 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.480 sea bathing, and when at Cheltenham in seventy eight, the 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.760 King and Queen saw Gloucester, Worcester, Tewkesbury, and a few 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:32.080 nearby manor houses like Maltston and Croome. But the Midlands 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.960 and North were a closed book, as was the southwest 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:40.359 end Cornwall. He never visited the University of Cambridge, nor 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:44.639 the great cathedrals at York, Lincoln, norch or Wells. The 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:49.040 explanation seems to be a certain lack of intellectual vitality, 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:53.400 the problem of conveying court and family, and the King's 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:58.840 preference for a routine and familiar existence. He really really 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.320 did seem to a door his children. When the time 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.879 came to find his daughter's suitable German husbands. King George said, 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.080 I cannot deny that I have never wished to see 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:13.000 any of them Mary. I am happy in their company 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:17.199 and do not in the least want a separation. But 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:22.080 then in something happened that put all talk of marriage 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:26.520 to rest. Just a week after he turned fifty, George 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:31.080 the Third became incredibly ill, vomiting and unable to leave bed. 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:35.840 This was in June. By October he still hadn't recovered. 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:40.440 He wasn't sleeping, had difficulty walking, and he was clutching 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.800 his stomach and pain. His legs cramped. Rheumatism plagued all 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:49.000 of his limbs, and he was confused, occasionally lashing out 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.919 with violence, but mostly he would just be a horse 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:55.800 from constant talking. His words would make very little sense. 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.520 They would just tumble from his lips without pause. His 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.280 mood was constantly agitated, and though he could barely stand 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.960 up on his own, he rose and sat up and 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:12.240 down frequently. By November he was delirious, confused, and insomniac. 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:15.879 There were rashes on his arms, bright red as if 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:18.560 he had been beaten, and the whites of his eyes 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.560 had turned yellow and gray. One of his more unusual 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.480 compulsions was an obsession with a courtier named Lady Pembroke. 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:29.480 King George, who had been loyal to his wife for 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.360 their entire three decade marriage up until that point, started 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:37.679 making explicit sexual comments to Lady Pembroke in public, who 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:41.720 was a longtime family friend. He openly lusted after her 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:45.760 and bad talked the Queen, but then periods of lucidity 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:50.399 would return and the King would be embarrassed and profusely apologetic. 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:56.160 He had seven royal physicians treating him. Their best explanation 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.560 for the baffling array of symptoms was that George was 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.399 suffering from a humor in his legs and that it 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.240 was his own fault because he had left wet stockings 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:12.439 on for too long. The physicians consulted and advised that 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:14.960 the King moved from Windsor to the palace at Q 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.280 so that he would have more privacy while he recovered. 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:22.040 But the change of scenery did nothing to improve his condition, 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:27.720 and so a specialist was brought in, Dr Francis Willis, 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:33.159 an Oxford educated clergyman who ran an asylum. Dr Willis's 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:39.440 strategy for managing mental illness was intimidation, coercion, and restraint. 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:44.120 His practice was based on the fundamental principle that mentally 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:48.320 ill patients had to be broken in like horses. When 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:53.439 King George rambled or misbehaved, he was physically restrained, pulled 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:56.480 into a strait jacket, or strapped onto a chair that 0:23:56.600 --> 0:24:00.680 George would miserably referred to as his coronation should chair. 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:04.639 Word of the King's incapacity led to something of a 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:09.480 political crisis. The king was an old fashioned conservative, supporter 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:13.119 of the Tories and their leader, Pitt the Younger. On 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:17.440 the opposition side was Charles James Fox, a Whig who 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:20.640 would very much prefer the more liberal George the Fourth 0:24:20.960 --> 0:24:25.440 to be in charge. Fox proposed a regency bill. After all, 0:24:25.480 --> 0:24:28.680 the King was clearly unwell and all of the powers 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:31.400 of the monarchy should be in the hands of his son, 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:35.400 George the Fourth. Pitt the Younger, knowing that he would 0:24:35.400 --> 0:24:38.600 be removed from office if George the Fourth was given 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:42.720 full royal powers, argued in favor of limiting the region's 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:48.080 temporary powers. It was an ironic reversal of political positions. 0:24:48.560 --> 0:24:51.240 Usually the Tories were the ones in favor of more 0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:54.199 royal power, and the Whigs were the ones arguing for 0:24:54.400 --> 0:24:57.760 limiting the role of the king, but while this issue 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:01.760 was still being debated in Parliament, it became moot. George 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:05.960 the third recovered before a regency bill ever passed. The 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:09.560 people rejoiced to have their king well again, and Dr 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:13.600 Willis became something of a national hero, with coins minted 0:25:13.640 --> 0:25:18.600 and busts sculpted in his honor. The king Farmer George 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:22.000 was more popular than ever. There were maybe a few 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:26.200 combined factors that led to this increase in popularity, maybe 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:29.520 a little bit of pity after his illness, maybe because 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:31.840 the people were so relieved not to have to suffer 0:25:31.880 --> 0:25:36.200 that young, awful George the fourth actually becoming king. Yes, 0:25:36.400 --> 0:25:39.480 maybe George the third was a little old fashioned, but 0:25:39.560 --> 0:25:43.840 he loved his wife and children. Domestically, he was above reproach. 0:25:44.359 --> 0:25:48.440 He had fought his hardest against those incorrigible colonies. It 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:52.480 was an age of conservatism and domestic welfare, and their 0:25:52.600 --> 0:25:56.800 king became a living folk hero. When George the third 0:25:56.920 --> 0:26:00.879 was bathing in Weymouth, a local band, carrying their instruments, 0:26:00.880 --> 0:26:04.240 all waded into the sea alongside him to play God 0:26:04.359 --> 0:26:07.600 Save the King. A few years later there was an 0:26:07.640 --> 0:26:11.439 assassination attempt when King George the Third was sitting in 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:14.399 the Royal Box of the Drury Lane Theater when a 0:26:14.440 --> 0:26:17.320 man in the pit stood on a box and fired 0:26:17.359 --> 0:26:20.760 two pistol shots at the king. The bullets missed by 0:26:20.880 --> 0:26:26.280 mirror inches, embedding themselves in the wooden paneling behind him. 0:26:26.320 --> 0:26:28.960 George was so un anxious at this period in his 0:26:29.040 --> 0:26:32.440 life that he insisted that the show continue, and then 0:26:32.440 --> 0:26:35.520 he fell asleep during intermission. It was this sort of 0:26:35.600 --> 0:26:39.080 anecdote that made the people love him. There were a 0:26:39.119 --> 0:26:44.000 few short bouts of the so named madness, but nothing unmanageable, 0:26:44.080 --> 0:26:48.320 and nothing that led to another regency crisis, at least 0:26:48.520 --> 0:26:53.639 not until eighteen ten. It was a tough year to 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:58.160 begin with. Early in spring, one of the king's sons, 0:26:58.440 --> 0:27:01.800 the Duke of Cumberland, was involved in the scandal where 0:27:01.800 --> 0:27:05.840 one of his valets was found dead, presumably by suicide, 0:27:06.280 --> 0:27:10.320 although the circumstances were grisly and mysterious and led to 0:27:10.400 --> 0:27:14.440 widely circulating rumors that maybe the valet had been murdered 0:27:14.480 --> 0:27:18.520 by the Duke himself. And then that summer, another of 0:27:18.560 --> 0:27:21.920 the king's children became a cause of concern. His daughter, 0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:27.560 Princess Amelia's health was deteriorating and quickly. Her health issues 0:27:27.600 --> 0:27:30.320 had begun with pain and her knee joints, and she 0:27:30.359 --> 0:27:33.359 had been sent to the seaside to recover. But the 0:27:33.400 --> 0:27:37.160 summer of eighteen ten, it became obvious that recovery wasn't 0:27:37.200 --> 0:27:41.080 going to be an option. She was dying of tuberculosis. 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:46.800 Saint Anthony's fire left her skin red and inflamed. Amelia 0:27:46.960 --> 0:27:50.160 was confined to her bed, but every single morning at 0:27:50.160 --> 0:27:53.520 seven am, the king summoned her doctors to report on 0:27:53.600 --> 0:27:57.800