type	monarch
name	George V
imgw	214
alt	Full-length portrait in oils of a blue-eyed, brown-haired man of slim build, with a beard and moustache. He wears a British naval uniform under an ermine cape, and beside him a jewelled crown stands on a table.
reign	6 May 1910 – 20 January 1936
coronation	22 June 1911
cor-type	britain
coronation1	12 December 1911
cor-type1	Imperial Durbar
succession	King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India
moretext	(more ...)
predecessor	Edward VII
successor	Edward VIII
reg-type	Prime Ministers
regent	''See list''
spouse	Mary of Teck
issue	Edward VIIIGeorge VIMary, Princess Royal, Countess of HarewoodPrince Henry, Duke of GloucesterPrince George, Duke of KentPrince John
full name	George Frederick Ernest Albert
house	House of WindsorHouse of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
father	Edward VII
mother	Alexandra of Denmark
birth date	June 03, 1865
birth place	Marlborough House, London
death date	January 20, 1936
death place	Sandringham House, Norfolk
date of burial	29 January 1936
place of burial	St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
religion	Church of England
signature	George V Signature.svg }}

George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 186520 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War (1914–1918) until his death in 1936.

George was a grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. From 1877 until 1891 he served in the Royal Navy. On the death of Victoria in 1901, George's father became King Edward VII, and George was made Prince of Wales. On his father's death in 1910, he succeeded as King-Emperor of the British Empire. He was the only Emperor of India to be present at his own Delhi Durbar.

As a result of the First World War, other empires in Europe fell while his expanded to its greatest extent. In 1917, he became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public feeling. His reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected House of Commons of the United Kingdom over the unelected House of Lords. He appointed the first Labour ministry in 1924 and in 1931, the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the empire as separate, independent kingdoms within the Commonwealth of Nations. He was plagued by illness throughout much of his later reign and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.

Early life and education

George was born on 3 June 1865, at Marlborough House, London, as the second son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Albert Edward and Alexandra. His father was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. His mother was the eldest daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. As a son of the Prince of Wales, George was styled ''His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales'' at birth. He was baptised in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 7 July 1865 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley.

As a younger son of the Prince of Wales, there was little expectation that George would become King. He was third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. George was only seventeen months younger than Albert Victor, and the two princes were educated together. John Neale Dalton was appointed as their tutor in 1871. Neither Albert Victor nor George excelled intellectually. As their father thought that the navy was "the very best possible training for any boy", in September 1877, when George was twelve years old, both brothers joined the cadet training ship HMS ''Britannia'' at Dartmouth, Devon.

For three years from 1879, the royal brothers served on HMS ''Bacchante'', accompanied by Dalton. They toured the colonies of the British Empire in the Caribbean, South Africa and Australia, and visited Norfolk, Virginia, as well as South America, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the Far East. In Japan, George had a local artist tattoo a blue and red dragon on his arm. Dalton wrote an account of their journey entitled ''The Cruise of HMS Bacchante''. Between Melbourne and Sydney, Dalton records a sighting of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a mythical ghost ship. When they returned to Britain, Queen Victoria complained that her grandsons could not speak French or German, and so they spent six months in Lausanne in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to learn another language. After Lausanne, the brothers were separated; Albert Victor attended Trinity College, Cambridge, while George continued in the Royal Navy. He travelled the world, visited many areas of the British Empire, and served actively until his last command in 1891–1892. From then on his naval rank was largely honorary.

Marriage

As a young man destined to serve in the navy, Prince George served for many years under the command of his uncle, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who was stationed in Malta. There, he grew close to and fell in love with his uncle's daughter, his first cousin, Marie of Edinburgh. His grandmother, father and uncle all approved the match, but the mothers, the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Edinburgh, both opposed it. The Princess of Wales thought the family was too pro-German, and the Duchess of Edinburgh disliked England. Marie's mother was the only daughter of the Tsar of Russia. She resented the fact that, as the wife of a younger son of the British sovereign, she had to yield precedence to George's mother, the Princess of Wales, whose father had been a minor German prince before being called unexpectedly to the throne of Denmark. Guided by her mother, Marie refused George when he proposed to her. She married Ferdinand, the heir to the King of Romania, in 1893.

In November 1891, George's elder brother Albert Victor became engaged to his second cousin once removed, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. She was known within the family as "May", nicknamed after her birth month. May's father, Prince Francis, Duke of Teck, belonged to a morganatic, cadet branch of the house of Württemberg. Her mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, was a male-line grand-daughter of King George III and a first cousin of Queen Victoria.

Six weeks after the formal engagement, Albert Victor died of pneumonia, leaving George second in line to the throne, and likely to succeed after his father. Queen Victoria still regarded Princess May as a suitable match for her grandson, and George and May grew close during their shared period of mourning. A year after Albert Victor's death, George duly proposed to May and was accepted. They married on 6 July 1893 at the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace, London. Throughout their lives, they remained devoted to each other. George was, on his own admission, unable to express his feelings easily in speech, but they often exchanged loving letters and notes of endearment.

Duke of York

The death of his elder brother effectively ended George's naval career, as he was now directly in the line of succession. George was created Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney by Queen Victoria on 24 May 1892, and received lessons in constitutional history from J. R. Tanner. After George's marriage to May, she was styled ''Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York''.

The Duke and Duchess of York lived mainly at York Cottage, a relatively small house in Sandringham, Norfolk, where their way of life mirrored that of a comfortable middle-class family rather than royalty. George preferred a simple, almost quiet, life in marked contrast to the lively social life pursued by his father. His official biographer, Harold Nicolson, later despaired of George's time as Duke of York, writing: "He may be all right as a young midshipman and a wise old king, but when he was Duke of York ... he did nothing at all but kill [''i.e.'' shoot] animals and stick in stamps." George was a well-known stamp collector, which Nicolson denigrated, but George played a large role in building the Royal Philatelic Collection into the most comprehensive collection of United Kingdom and Commonwealth stamps in the world, in some cases setting record purchase prices for items.

George and May had five sons and a daughter. Randolph Churchill claimed that George was a strict father, to the extent that his children were terrified of him, and that George had remarked to Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby: "My father was frightened of his mother, I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me." In reality there is no direct source for the quotation and it is likely that George's parenting style was little different from that adopted by most people at the time.

Prince of Wales

As Duke and Duchess of York, George and May carried out a wide variety of public duties. On the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901, George's father ascended the throne as King Edward VII. George inherited the titles of Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, and for much of the rest of that year, he was styled ''His Royal Highness The Duke of Cornwall and York''.

In 1901, George and May toured the British Empire. Their tour included South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the Colony of Newfoundland. The tour was designed by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain with the support of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. Its primary goal was to reward the dominions for their participation in the South African War of 1899–1902. At every stop George ceremoniously presented thousands of specially designed South African War medals to colonial troops. In South Africa the royal party was greeted by elaborate decorations, expensive gifts, fireworks displays, and met with civic leaders, African leaders, and Boer prisoners. Despite this outward display, not all residents responded favourably to the tour. Many white Cape Afrikaners resented both the display and the expense, the events of the war having weakened their capacity to reconcile their Afrikaner-Dutch culture with their status as British subjects. Critics in the English-language press decried the enormous expenditures at a time when families faced severe hardship. In Australia the Duke opened the first session of the Australian Parliament upon the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The tour gave New Zealanders a chance to show off their progress, especially in their adoption of up-to-date British standards in communications and the processing industries, and to be honoured by the Duke for what he praised as their military values, bravery, loyalty, and obedience to duty. The implicit goal was to advertise New Zealand's attractiveness to tourists and potential immigrants, while avoiding news of growing social tensions. The visit to New Zealand focused the attention of the British press on a land few knew about. On his return to Britain, in a speech at London's Guildhall, George warned of "the impression which seemed to prevail among [our] brethren across the seas, that the Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her colonial trade against foreign competitors."

On 9 November 1901, George was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. King Edward VII wished to prepare his son for his future role as King. In contrast to Edward himself, whom Queen Victoria had deliberately excluded from state affairs, George was given wide access to state documents by his father. George in turn allowed his wife access to his papers, as he valued her counsel and May often helped write her husband's speeches.

From November 1905 to March 1906, George and May toured British India, where he was disgusted by racial discrimination and campaigned for greater involvement of Indians in the government of the country. The tour was almost immediately followed by a trip to Spain for the wedding of King Alfonso XIII to Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, at which the bride and groom narrowly avoided assassination. A week after returning to Britain, George and May travelled to Norway for the coronation of King Haakon VII and Queen Maud, George's sister.

King and Emperor

On 6 May 1910, King Edward VII died, and George became King. He had never liked his wife's habit of signing official documents and letters as "Victoria Mary" and insisted she drop one of those names. They both thought she should not be called Queen Victoria, and so she became Queen Mary. Later that year, a radical propagandist, Edward Mylius, published a lie that George had secretly married in Malta as a young man, and that consequently his marriage to Queen Mary was bigamous. The lie had first surfaced in print in 1893 but George had shrugged it off as a joke. In an effort to kill off rumours, Mylius was arrested, tried and found guilty of criminal libel, and was sentenced to a year in prison.

The new King and Queen's coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911, and was celebrated by the Festival of Empire in London. Later in 1911, the King and Queen travelled to India for the Delhi Durbar, where they were presented to an assembled audience of Indian dignitaries and princes as the Emperor and Empress of India on 12 December 1911. George wore the newly-created Imperial Crown of India at the ceremony, and declared the shifting of the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. On 15 December, he laid the foundation stone of New Delhi with Queen Mary. They travelled throughout the sub-continent, and George took the opportunity to indulge in big game hunting in Nepal, shooting 21 tigers, 8 rhinoceroses and a bear over 10 days. He was a keen and expert marksman. On 18 December 1913, he shot over a thousand pheasants in six hours at the home of Lord Burnham, although even he had to acknowledge that "we went a little too far" that day.

George inherited the throne at a politically turbulent time. The Liberal Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, led a minority government dependent upon the support of Irish Nationalists. Asquith's reforming People's Budget had been rejected the previous year by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords. Asquith had asked the previous King to give an undertaking that he would create sufficient Liberal peers to force the budget through the House if it was rejected again. Edward had reluctantly agreed, with conditions, and after a general election in January 1910 and fearing the mass creation, the Conservative peers let the budget through. Asquith attempted to curtail the power of the Lords through constitutional reforms, which were again blocked by the Upper House. Like his father, George reluctantly agreed to Asquith's request to create sufficient Liberal peers after a general election if the Lords blocked the legislation. After the December 1910 election, the Lords once again let the bill pass on hearing of the threat to swamp the house with new peers. The subsequent Parliament Act 1911 permanently removed the power of the Lords to veto money bills. As part of his Irish policy, Asquith introduced legislation that would give Ireland Home Rule, but the Conservatives and Unionists opposed it. Desperate to avoid the prospect of Civil War in Ireland between Unionists and Nationalists, George called a meeting of all parties at Buckingham Palace in July 1914 in an attempt to negotiate a settlement. After four days the Conference ended without an agreement. On 18 September 1914, the King gave his assent to the Home Rule Bill, but its implementation was postponed by a Suspensory Act due to the outbreak of World War I.

First World War

From 1914 to 1918 Britain was at war with Germany. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who for the British public came to symbolise all the horrors of the war, was the King's first cousin. The King's paternal grandfather was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; consequently, the King and his children bore the titles Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke and Duchess of Saxony. Queen Mary, although British like her mother, was the daughter of the Duke of Teck, a descendant of the German Dukes of Württemberg. The King had brothers-in-law and cousins who were British subjects but who bore German titles such as Duke and Duchess of Teck, Prince and Princess of Battenberg, and Prince and Princess of Schleswig-Holstein. When H. G. Wells wrote about Britain's "alien and uninspiring court", George famously replied: "I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien."

On 17 July 1917, George appeased British nationalist feelings by issuing a royal proclamation that changed the name of the British Royal House from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. He and all his British relatives relinquished their German titles and styles, and adopted British-sounding surnames. George compensated his male relatives by creating them British peers. His cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who earlier in the war had been forced to resign as First Sea Lord through anti-German feeling, became Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, while Queen Mary's brothers became Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge, and Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone. George's cousins Princess Marie Louise and Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein dropped their territorial designations.

In Letters Patent gazetted on 11 December 1917, the King restricted the style "His (or Her) Royal Highness" and the titular dignity of "Prince (or Princess) of Great Britain and Ireland" to the children of the Sovereign, the children of the sons of the Sovereign and the eldest living son of the eldest living son of a Prince of Wales. The Letters Patent also stated that "the titles of Royal Highness, Highness or Serene Highness, and the titular dignity of Prince and Princess shall cease except those titles already granted and remaining unrevoked". Relatives of the British Royal Family who fought on the German side, such as Prince Ernst August of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale (the senior male-line great grandson of George III) and Prince Carl Eduard, Duke of Albany and reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a male-line grandson of Queen Victoria), were cut off; their British peerages were suspended by a 1919 Order-in-Council under the provisions of the Titles Deprivation Act 1917. Under pressure from his mother, Queen Alexandra, George also removed the Garter flags of his German relations from St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

When Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, George's first cousin (their mothers were sisters), was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the British Government offered asylum to the Tsar and his family, but worsening conditions for the British people, and fears that revolution might come to the British Isles, led George to think that the presence of the Russian royals might seem inappropriate under the circumstances. Despite the later claims of Lord Mountbatten of Burma that David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, was opposed to the rescue of the Russian imperial family, the letters of the King's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, suggest that it was George V who opposed the rescue against the advice of the government. Advanced planning for a rescue was undertaken by MI1, a branch of the British secret service, but because of the strengthening position of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and wider difficulties with the conduct of the war, the plan was never put into operation. The Tsar and his immediate family remained in Russia, where they were murdered by Bolsheviks in 1918. The following year, Nicholas's mother (George's aunt) Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) and other members of the extended Russian imperial family were rescued from the Crimea by British ships.

Two months after the end of the war, the King's youngest son, John, died at the age of 13 after a lifetime of ill health. George was informed of his death by Queen Mary, who wrote, "[John] had been a great anxiety to us for many years ... The first break in the family circle is hard to bear but people have been so kind & sympathetic & this has helped us much."

In May 1922, the King toured northern France and Belgium, visiting the First World War cemeteries and memorials being constructed by the Imperial War Graves Commission. The event was described in a poem, ''The King's Pilgrimage'' by Rudyard Kipling. The tour, and one short visit to Italy in 1923, were the only times George agreed to leave the United Kingdom on official business after the end of the war.

Later life

Before the First World War, most of Europe was ruled by monarchs related to George, but during and after the war, the monarchies of Austria, Germany, Greece, and Spain, like Russia, fell to revolution and war. In March 1919 Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt was dispatched on the personal authority of the King to escort the former Emperor Charles I of Austria and his family to safety in Switzerland. In 1922, a Royal Navy ship was sent to Greece to rescue his cousins, Prince and Princess Andrew. Prince Andrew was a nephew of Queen Alexandra through her brother King George I of Greece, and Princess Andrew was a daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg, one of the German princes granted a British peerage in 1917. Their children included Prince Philip, who would later marry George's granddaughter, Elizabeth II. The Greek monarchy was restored again shortly before George's death.

Political turmoil in Ireland continued as the Nationalists fought for independence; George expressed his horror at government-sanctioned killings and reprisals to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. At the opening session of the Parliament of Northern Ireland on 22 June 1921, the King, in a speech part drafted by Lloyd George and General Jan Smuts, appealed for conciliation. A few days later, a truce was agreed. Negotiations between Britain and the Irish secessionists led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. By the end of 1922, Ireland was partitioned, the Irish Free State was established, and Lloyd George was out of office.

The King and his top advisers were concerned about the rise of socialism and the growing labour movement, which they associated with republicanism. Their concerns, although exaggerated, resulted in a redesign of the monarchy's social role to be more inclusive of the working class and its representatives—a dramatic change for George, who was most comfortable with naval officers and landed gentry. In fact the socialists no longer believed in their anti-monarchical slogans and were ready to come to terms with the monarchy if it took the first step. George took that step, adopting a more democratic stance that crossed class lines and brought the monarchy closer to the public. The King also cultivated friendly relations with moderate Labour party politicians and trade union officials. George V's abandonment of social aloofness conditioned the royal family's behaviour and enhanced its popularity during the economic crises of the 1920s and for over two generations thereafter. The years between 1922 and 1929 saw frequent changes in government. In 1924, George appointed the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, in the absence of a clear majority for any one of the three parties. George's tactful and understanding reception of the first Labour government (which lasted less than a year) allayed the suspicions of the party's sympathisers. During the General Strike of 1926 the King advised the Government of Conservative Stanley Baldwin against taking inflammatory action, and took exception to suggestions that the strikers were "revolutionaries" saying, "Try living on their wages before you judge them."

In 1926, George hosted an Imperial Conference in London at which the Balfour Declaration accepted the growth of the British Dominions into self-governing "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another". In 1931, the Statute of Westminster formalised George's position as "the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". The Statute established "that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles" would require the assent of the Parliaments of the Dominions as well as Parliament at Westminster, which could not legislate for the Dominions, except by consent.

In the wake of a world financial crisis, the King encouraged the formation of a National Government in 1931 led by MacDonald and Baldwin, and volunteered to reduce the civil list to help balance the budget.

He was concerned by the coming to power in 1933 of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. In 1934 the king bluntly told the German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch that Germany was now the peril of the world, and that, if she went on at the present rate, there was bound to be a war within ten years; he warned his ambassador in Berlin Eric Phipps to be suspicious of the Nazis. By the silver jubilee of his reign in 1935, he had become a well-loved king, saying in response to the crowd's adulation, "I cannot understand it, after all I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow."

George's relationship with his eldest son and heir, Edward, deteriorated in these later years. George was disappointed in Edward's failure to settle down in life and appalled by his many affairs with married women. In contrast, he was fond of his second eldest son, Prince Albert (later George VI), and doted on his eldest granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth; he nicknamed her "Lilibet", and she affectionately called him "Grandpa England". In 1935 George said of his son Edward: "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months", and of Albert and Lilibet: "I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

Declining health and death

The First World War took a toll on George's health: he was seriously injured on 28 October 1915 when thrown by his horse at a troop review in France, and his heavy smoking exacerbated recurring breathing problems. He suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pleurisy. In 1925, on the instruction of his doctors, he was reluctantly sent on a recuperative private cruise in the Mediterranean; it was his third trip abroad since the war, and his last. In November 1928, he fell seriously ill with septicaemia, and for the next two years his son Edward took over many of his duties. In 1929, the suggestion of a further rest abroad was rejected by the King "in rather strong language". Instead, he retired for a brief period to Craigweil House, Aldwick, in the seaside resort of Bognor, Sussex. As a result of his stay, the town acquired the designation of 'Regis', which is Latin for 'of the King'. A myth later grew that his last words, upon being told that he would soon be well enough to revisit the town, were "Bugger Bognor!"

George never fully recovered. In his final year, he was occasionally administered oxygen. On the evening of 15 January 1936, the King took to his bedroom at Sandringham House complaining of a cold; he would never again leave the room alive. He became gradually weaker, drifting in and out of consciousness. Prime Minister Baldwin later said,

By 20 January, he was close to death. His physicians, led by Lord Dawson of Penn, issued a bulletin with words that became famous: "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close." Dawson's private diary, unearthed after his death, reveals that the King's last words, a mumbled "God damn you!", were addressed to his nurse when she gave him a sedative on the night of 20 January. Dawson wrote that he hastened the King's end by giving him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine, both to prevent further strain on the family and so that the King's death at 11:55 pm could be announced in the morning edition of ''The Times'' newspaper rather than "less appropriate ... evening journals".

The German composer Paul Hindemith went to a BBC studio on the morning after the king's death and in six hours wrote ''Trauermusik'' (Mourning Music). It was performed that same evening in a live broadcast by the BBC, with Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the composer as soloist.

At the procession to George's Lying in State in Westminster Hall, part of the Imperial State Crown fell from on top of the coffin and landed in the gutter as the cortège turned into New Palace Yard. The new king, Edward VIII, saw it fall and wondered whether it was a bad omen for his new reign. Edward would abdicate before the year was out, leaving Albert, Duke of York, to ascend the throne (taking the title George VI).

As a mark of respect to their father, George's four surviving sons, Edward, Albert, Henry and George, mounted the guard, known as the Vigil of the Princes, at the catafalque on the night before the funeral. The vigil was not repeated until the death of George's daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, in 2002. He was interred at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 28 January 1936.

Legacy

George preferred to stay at home pursuing his hobbies of stamp collecting and game shooting, and lived what later biographers would consider a dull life because of its conventionality. He was earnestly devoted to Britain and the British Commonwealth. He appeared hard working and became widely admired by the people of Britain and the Empire, as well as "The Establishment". Anti-intellectual and lacking the sophistication of his two royal predecessors, he nevertheless understood the British Empire better than most of his ministers; indeed he explained, "it has always been my dream to identify myself with the great idea of Empire." Historian David Cannadine portrays George V and Queen Mary as an "inseparably devoted couple" who did so much to uphold "character" and "family values". George established a standard of conduct for British royalty that reflected the values and virtues of the upper middle-class rather than upper-class lifestyles or vices. He was by temperament a traditionalist who never fully appreciated or approved the revolutionary changes underway in British society. Nevertheless, he invariably wielded his influence as a force of neutrality and moderation, seeing his role as mediator rather than final decision maker. Statues of King George V include those in Hobart, Canberra, Brisbane and Adelaide in Australia, and one by William Reid Dick outside Westminster Abbey, London. The King George V Playing Fields in the United Kingdom were created as a memorial. Today, they are each registered charities and are under the guidance of the National Playing Fields Association. The national stadium of Newfoundland in St. John's was named King George V Park in 1925. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv both have major thoroughfares named for King George V during the British Mandate for Palestine. In Paris, a large avenue from the top of the Champs-Elysées down to the Seine river and an underground station were named for George V; as are Avenue Georges, Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada; King George V Avenue, Sale, Victoria, Australia; King George V Secondary School, Malaysia; and King George V School, and King George V Memorial Park in Hong Kong.

Two Royal Navy battleships, HMS ''King George V'' in 1911 and her namesake in 1939, were named in his honour. George V gave both his name and donations to many charities, including King George's Fund for Sailors (later known as Seafarers UK).

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

3 June 1865 – 24 May 1892: ''His Royal Highness'' Prince George of Wales

24 May 1892 – 22 January 1901: ''His Royal Highness'' The Duke of York

22 January 1901 – 9 November 1901: ''His Royal Highness'' The Duke of Cornwall and York

9 November 1901 – 6 May 1910: ''His Royal Highness'' The Prince of Wales

* ''in Scotland: His Royal Highness'' The Duke of Rothesay

6 May 1910 – 20 January 1936: ''His Majesty'' The King

* ''and, occasionally, outside of the United Kingdom, and with regard to India: His Imperial Majesty'' The King-Emperor

His full style as king was "''His Majesty'' George V, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India", until 1927, when it was changed to "''His Majesty'' George V, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India"

Honours

KG: Knight of the Garter, ''4 August 1884''

KT: Knight of the Thistle, ''5 July 1893''

KP: Knight of St Patrick, ''20 August 1897''

GCSI: Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India, ''28 September 1905''

GCMG: Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George, ''9 March 1901''

GCIE: Knight Grand Commander of the Indian Empire, ''28 September 1905''

GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, ''30 June 1897''

ISO: Imperial Service Order, ''31 March 1903''

Royal Victorian Chain, ''1902''

PC: Privy Counsellor, ''18 July 1894''

* Privy Counsellor (Ireland), ''20 August 1897''

FRS: Royal Fellow of the Royal Society, ''8 June 1893''

Military appointments

Cdt, ''September 1877'': Cadet, HMS ''Britannia''

Mid, ''8 January 1880'': Midshipman, HMS ''Bacchante'' and the corvette ''Canada''

SLt, ''3 June 1884'': Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Navy

Lt, ''8 October 1885'': Lieutenant, HMS ''Thunderer''; HMS ''Dreadnought''; HMS ''Alexandra''; HMS ''Northumberland''

Personal Aide-de-Camp to the Queen, ''21 June 1887''

I/C Torpedo Boat 79; the gunboat HMS ''Thrush''

Cdr, ''24 August 1891'': Commander, I/C the ''Melampus''

Capt, ''2 January 1893'': Captain, Royal Navy RAdm, ''1 January 1901'': Rear-Admiral, Royal Navy VAdm, ''26 June 1903'': Vice-Admiral, Royal Navy Adm, ''1 March 1907'': Admiral, Royal Navy ''1910'': Admiral of the Fleet, Royal Navy Chief of the Royal Air Force (title not rank)

''1918'': Field Marshal, IJA

Arms

As Duke of York, George's arms were the royal arms, with an inescutcheon of the arms of Saxony, all differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing an anchor azure. As Prince of Wales the centre label lost its anchor. As King, he bore the royal arms. In 1917, he removed, by warrant, the Saxony inescutcheon from the arms of all descendants of the Prince Consort (although the royal arms themselves had never borne the shield).

{{Image gallery|lines=2|width=200|height=200 |Coat of Arms of George, Duke of York.svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of George, Duke of York |Coat of Arms of George, Prince of Wales (1901-1910).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of George, Prince of Wales |Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (1837-1952).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of George V of the United Kingdom |Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom in Scotland (1837-1952).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms of George V of the United Kingdom (in Scotland) }}

On-screen portrayals

On screen, George has been portrayed by:

Henry Warwick in the 1918 silent film ''Why America Will Win''

William Gaffney in the 1919 silent film ''The Great Victory, Wilson or the Kaiser? The Fall of the Hohenzollerns''

Derek Erskine in the 1925 silent film ''The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama''

Carleton Hobbs in the 1965 film ''A King's Story''

Michael Osborne in the 1975 ATV drama series ''Edward the Seventh''

Marius Goring in the 1978 Thames Television series ''Edward & Mrs. Simpson''

Keith Varnier in the 1978 LWT drama series ''Lillie'',

Rene Aranda in the 1980 film ''The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu''

Andrew Gilmour in the 1985 Australian miniseries ''A Thousand Skies''

David Ravenswood in the 1990 Australian TV miniseries ''The Great Air Race''

John Warner in the 1991 RTE TV drama ''The Treaty''

David Troughton in the 1999 BBC TV drama ''All the King's Men''

Rupert Frazer in the 2002 TV miniseries ''Shackleton'',

Alan Bates in the 2002 Carlton Television drama ''Bertie and Elizabeth''

Tom Hollander in the 2003 BBC miniseries ''The Lost Prince'' (2003)

Clifford Rose in the 2005 TV drama ''Wallis & Edward''

Andrew Pritchard in the 2005 British TV drama documentary ''The First Black Britons''

Julian Wadham in the 2007 TV drama ''My Boy Jack''.

Michael Gambon in the 2010 film ''The King's Speech''.

Ancestors

{{ahnentafel-compact5 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. George V of the United Kingdom |2= 2. Edward VII of the United Kingdom |3= 3. Princess Alexandra of Denmark |4= 4. Albert, Prince Consort |5= 5. Queen Victoria |6= 6. Christian IX of Denmark |7= 7. Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel |8= 8. Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha |9= 9. Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg |10= 10. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn |11= 11. Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld |12= 12. Frederick William, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg |13= 13. Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel |14= 14. Landgrave William of Hesse-Kassel |15= 15. Princess Louise Charlotte of Denmark |16= 16. Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld |17= 17. Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf |18= 18. Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg |19= 19. Duchess Louise Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |20= 20. George III of the United Kingdom |21= 21. Duchess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz |22= 22. Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (= 16) |23= 23. Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf (= 17) |24= 24. Frederick Charles Louis, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck |25= 25. Countess Friederike of Schlieben |26= 26. Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Kassel |27= 27. Princess Louise of Denmark |28= 28. Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Kassel |29= 29. Princess Caroline of Nassau-Usingen |30= 30. Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Norway |31= 31. Duchess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin }}

Issue

23 June 1894 14 December 1895 25 April 1897 31 March 1900 20 December 1902 12 July 1905

!Name!!Birth!!Death!!Spouse!!Children
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom	Edward VIIILater Duke of Windsor	|	28 May 1972	Wallis, Duchess of Windsor>Wallis Simpson	None
George VI of the United Kingdom	George VI	|	6 February 1952	Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon>Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon	Elizabeth IIPrincess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood	|	28 March 1965	Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood	George Lascelles, 7th Earl of HarewoodGerald Lascelles>The Honourable Gerald Lascelles
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester	|	10 June 1974	Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester>Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott	Prince William of GloucesterPrince Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Prince George, Duke of Kent	|	25 August 1942	Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark	Prince Edward, Duke of KentPrincess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady OgilvyPrince Michael of Kent
Prince John of the United Kingdom	Prince John	|	18 January 1919	Never married	None

Notes and sources

References

Matthew, H. C. G. (September 2004; online edition May 2009) "George V (1865–1936)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33369, retrieved 1 May 2010 (Subscription required)

External links

Special issue of the Illustrated London News covering King George V's death

Newsreel footage of King George V's coronation

Sound recording of King George V's Silver Jubilee speech

|- |-

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type	monarch
name	George III
alt	Full-length portrait in oils of a clean-shaven young man in eighteenth century dress: gold jacket and breeches, ermine cloak, powdered wig, white stockings, and buckled shoes.
reign	25 October 1760 – 29 January 1820
coronation	22 September 1761
cor-type	britain
succession	King of Great Britain and Ireland'' later''King of the United Kingdom and of Hanover
moretext	(more...)
predecessor	George II
regent	George, Prince Regent ''(1811–1820)''
successor	George IV
reg-type1	Prime Ministers
regent1
spouse	Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
issue	George IVPrince Frederick, Duke of YorkWilliam IVCharlotte, Princess Royal, Queen of WürttembergPrince Edward, Duke of KentPrincess Augusta SophiaElizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-HomburgErnest Augustus I of HanoverPrince Augustus Frederick, Duke of SussexPrince Adolphus, Duke of CambridgePrincess Mary, Duchess of GloucesterPrincess SophiaPrince OctaviusPrince AlfredPrincess Amelia
house	House of Hanover
anthem	God Save the King
full name	George William Frederick
father	Frederick, Prince of Wales
mother	Augusta of Saxe-Gotha
birth date	4 June 1738 [N.S.]
birth place	Norfolk House, St. James's Square, London
death date	January 29, 1820
death place	Windsor Castle
date of burial	15 February 1820
place of burial	St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
signature	George III Signature.svg
signature alt	Handwritten "George" with a huge leading "G" and a curious curlicue at the end
religion	Anglican

George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke and prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two Hanoverian predecessors he was born in Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

His life and reign, which were longer than those of any previous British monarch, were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence.

He played a minor role in the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793, which concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In the later part of his life, George III suffered from recurrent, and eventually permanent, mental illness. Medical practitioners were baffled by this at the time, although it has since been suggested that he suffered from the blood disease porphyria. After a final relapse in 1810, a regency was established, and George III's eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent. On George III's death, the Prince Regent succeeded his father as George IV. Historical analysis of George III's life has gone through a "kaleidoscope of changing views" which have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them. Until re-assessment in the later half of the twentieth century, his reputation in America was one of a tyrant and in Britain he became "the scapegoat for the failure of imperialism". He is most remembered as "The Mad King" and "The King Who Lost America".

Early life

George was born in London at Norfolk House. He was the grandson of King George II, and the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As Prince George was born two months premature and was thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James's and the Bishop of Oxford. One month later, he was publicly baptised at Norfolk House, again by Secker. His godparents were the King of Sweden (for whom Lord Baltimore stood proxy), his uncle the Duke of Saxe-Gotha (for whom Lord Carnarvon stood proxy) and his great-aunt the Queen of Prussia (for whom Lady Charlotte Edwin stood proxy).

George grew into a healthy, but also reserved and shy child. The family moved to Leicester Square, where George and his younger brother Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany, were educated together by private tutors. Family letters show that he could read and write in both English and German, as well as comment on political events of the time, by the age of eight. He was the first British monarch to study science systematically. Apart from chemistry and physics, his lessons included astronomy, mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce, agriculture and constitutional law, along with sporting and social accomplishments such as dancing, fencing, and riding. His religious education was wholly Anglican. At age 10 George took part in a family production of Joseph Addison's play ''Cato'' and said in the new prologue: "What, tho' a boy! It may with truth be said, A boy in ''England'' born, in England bred". The historian Romney Sedgwick has argued that these lines appear "to be the source of the only historical phrase with which he is associated". George's grandfather, King George II, disliked the Prince of Wales and took little interest in his grandchildren. However, in 1751 the Prince of Wales died unexpectedly from a lung injury, and George became heir apparent to the throne. He inherited one of his father's titles and became the Duke of Edinburgh. Now more interested in his grandson, three weeks later the King created George Prince of Wales (the title is not automatically acquired).

In the spring of 1756, as George approached his eighteenth birthday, the King offered him a grand establishment at St James's Palace, but George refused the offer, guided by his mother and her confidante, Lord Bute, who would later serve as Prime Minister. George's mother, now the Dowager Princess of Wales, preferred to keep George at home where she could imbue him with her strict moral values.

Marriage

In 1759, George was smitten with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, but Lord Bute advised against the match and George abandoned his thoughts of marriage. "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation," he wrote, "and consequently must often act contrary to my passions." Nevertheless, attempts by the King to marry George to Duchess Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel were resisted by him and his mother; Sophia married the Margrave of Bayreuth instead.

The following year, at the age of 22, George succeeded to the crown when his grandfather, George II, died suddenly on 25 October 1760, two weeks before his 77th birthday. The search for a suitable wife intensified. On 8 September 1761 in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, the King married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he met on their wedding day. A fortnight later, both were crowned at Westminster Abbey. George remarkably never took a mistress (in contrast with his grandfather and his sons), and the couple enjoyed a genuinely happy marriage. They had 15 children—nine sons and six daughters. In 1762, George purchased Buckingham House (on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace) for use as a family retreat. His other residences were Kew and Windsor Castle. St. James's Palace was retained for official use. He did not travel extensively, and spent his entire life in southern England. In the 1790s, annual holidays were taken at Weymouth, Dorset, which he popularised as one of the first seaside resorts in England.

Early reign

George, in his accession speech to Parliament, proclaimed: "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain". George inserted this phrase into the speech, written by Lord Hardwicke, and it demonstrated George's desire to distance himself from his German forebears, who were perceived as caring more for Hanover than for Britain. The historians Brendan Simms and Torsten Riotte have argued that "The majority of historians have accepted this statement as the core of George III's political beliefs and as an argument against the importance of the dynastic union under the third Hanoverian".

Although George's accession was at first welcomed by politicians of all parties, the first years of George's reign were marked by political instability, largely generated as a result of disagreements over the Seven Years' War. George was perceived as favouring Tory ministers, which led to his denunciation by the Whigs as an autocrat. On George's accession, the Crown lands produced relatively little income; most revenue was generated through taxes and excise duties. George surrendered the Crown Estate to Parliamentary control in return for a Civil List annuity for the support of his household and the expenses of Civil Government. Claims that George used the income to reward supporters with bribes and gifts are disputed by historians who say such claims "rest on nothing but falsehoods put out by disgruntled opposition". Debts amounting to over £3 million over the course of George's reign were paid by Parliament, and the Civil List annuity was increased from time to time. George aided the Royal Academy with large grants from his private funds, and may have donated more than half of his personal income to charity. Of George's art collection, the two most notable purchases are Vermeer's ''Lady at the Virginals'' and a set of Canalettos, but it is as a collector of books that he is best remembered. The King's Library was open and available to scholars and was the foundation of a new national library. In May 1762, the incumbent Whig ministry of the Duke of Newcastle was replaced with one led by the Scottish Tory Lord Bute. Bute's opponents worked against him by spreading the calumny that he was having an affair with the King's mother, and by exploiting anti-Scottish prejudices amongst the English. John Wilkes, a Member of Parliament, published ''The North Briton'', which was both inflammatory and defamatory in its condemnation of Bute and the government. Wilkes was eventually arrested for seditious libel but he fled to France to escape punishment; he was expelled from the House of Commons, and found guilty ''in absentia'' of blasphemy and libel. In 1763, after concluding the Peace of Paris which ended the war, Lord Bute resigned, allowing the Whigs under George Grenville to return to power.

Later that year, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 placed a boundary upon the westward expansion of the American colonies. The Proclamation aimed to divert colonial expansion to the north (to Nova Scotia) and to the south (Florida). The Proclamation Line did not bother the majority of settled farmers, but it was unpopular with a vocal minority and ultimately contributed to conflict between the colonists and the British government. With the American colonists generally unburdened by British taxes, the government thought it appropriate for them to pay towards the defence of the colonies against native uprisings and the possibility of French incursions. The central issue for the colonists was not the amount of taxes but whether Parliament could levy a tax without American approval, for there were no American seats in Parliament. The Americans protested that like all Englishmen they had rights to "no taxation without representation", an argument London dismissed in the name of virtual representation. In 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Act, which levied a stamp duty on every document in the British colonies in North America. Since newspapers were printed on stamped paper, those most affected by the introduction of the duty were the most effective at producing propaganda opposing the tax. Meanwhile, the King had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of Prime Minister. After a brief illness, which may have presaged his illnesses to come, George settled on Lord Rockingham to form a ministry, and dismissed Grenville. Lord Rockingham, with the support of Pitt and the King, repealed Grenville's unpopular Stamp Act, but his government was weak and he was replaced in 1766 by Pitt, whom George created Earl of Chatham. The actions of Lord Chatham and George III in repealing the Act were so popular in America that statues of them both were erected in New York City. Lord Chatham fell ill in 1767, and the Duke of Grafton took over the government, although he did not formally become Prime Minister until 1768. That year, John Wilkes returned to England, stood as a candidate in the general election, and came top of the poll in the Middlesex constituency. Wilkes was again expelled from Parliament. Wilkes was re-elected and expelled twice more, before the House of Commons resolved that his candidature was invalid and declared the runner-up as the victor. Grafton's government disintegrated in 1770, allowing the Tories led by Lord North to return to power. George was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, but his piety was not shared by his brothers. George was appalled by what he saw as their loose morals. In 1770, his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, was exposed as an adulterer, and the following year Cumberland married a young widow, Anne Horton. The King considered her inappropriate as a royal bride: she was from a lower social class and German law barred any children of the couple from the Hanoverian succession. George insisted on a new law that essentially forbade members of the Royal Family from legally marrying without the consent of the Sovereign. The subsequent bill was unpopular in Parliament, including among George's own ministers, but passed as the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Shortly afterward, another of George's brothers, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, revealed he had been secretly married to Maria, Countess Waldegrave, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole. The news confirmed George's opinion that he had been right to introduce the law: Maria was related to his political opponents. Neither lady was ever received at court.

Lord North's government was chiefly concerned with discontent in America. To assuage American opinion most of the custom duties were withdrawn, except for the tea duty, which in George's words was "one tax to keep up the right [to levy taxes]". In 1773, the tea ships moored in Boston Harbor were boarded by colonists and the tea thrown overboard, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. In Britain, opinion hardened against the colonists, with Chatham now agreeing with North that the destruction of the tea was "certainly criminal". With the clear support of Parliament Lord North introduced measures, which were called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists: the Port of Boston was shut down and the charter of Massachusetts was altered so that the upper house of the legislature was appointed by the Crown instead of elected by the lower house. Up to this point, in the words of Professor Peter Thomas, George's "hopes were centred on a political solution, and he always bowed to his cabinet's opinions even when sceptical of their success. The detailed evidence of the years from 1763 to 1775 tends to exonerate George III from any real responsibility for the American Revolution." Though the Americans characterised George as a tyrant, in these years he acted as a constitutional monarch supporting the initiatives of his ministers.

American War of Independence

The American Revolution began when armed conflict between British regulars and colonial militiamen broke out in New England in April 1775. After a year of fighting, the colonies declared their independence from the Crown as "free and independent States" in July 1776, and listed grievances against the British king, legislature, and populace. Among George's other offences, the Declaration charged, "He has abdicated Government here ... He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The gilded equestrian statue of George III in New York was pulled down. The British captured the city in 1776, but lost Boston, and the grand strategic plan of invading from Canada and cutting off New England failed with the surrender of the British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga.

George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war with the revolutionaries in America, despite the opinions of his own ministers. In the words of the Victorian author George Trevelyan, the King was determined "never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal." The King wanted to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse". However, more recent historians defend George by saying in the context of the times no king would willingly surrender such a large territory, and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporary monarchs in Europe. After Saratoga, both Parliament and the British people were in favour of the war; recruitment ran at high levels and although political opponents were vocal, they remained a small minority. With the setbacks in America, Prime Minister Lord North asked to transfer power to Lord Chatham, whom he thought more capable, but George refused to do so; he suggested instead that Chatham serve as a subordinate minister in Lord North's administration, but Chatham refused to cooperate. He died later in the same year. In early 1778, France (Britain's chief rival) signed a treaty of alliance with the United States and the conflict escalated. The United States and France were soon joined by Spain and the Dutch Republic, while Britain had no major allies of its own. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both resigned from the government. Lord North again requested that he also be allowed to resign, but he stayed in office at George III's insistence. Opposition to the costly war was increasing, and in June 1780 contributed to disturbances in London known as the Gordon riots.

In late 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the Siege of Yorktown reached London; Lord North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned the following year. The King drafted an abdication notice, which was never delivered, finally accepted the defeat in North America, and authorised the negotiation of a peace. The Treaties of Paris, by which Britain recognised the independence of the American states and returned Florida to Spain, were ratified in 1783. When John Adams was appointed American Minister to London in 1785, George had become resigned to the new relationship between his country and the States. He told Adams, "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."

Constitutional struggle

With the collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister for the second time, but died within months. The King then appointed Lord Shelburne to replace him. Charles James Fox, however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of the Duke of Portland. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Lord Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the Fox-North Coalition. The Duke of Portland became Prime Minister, with Fox and Lord North, as Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary respectively.

The King disliked Fox intensely, for his politics as well as his character; he thought Fox was unprincipled and a bad influence on the Prince of Wales. George III was distressed at having to appoint ministers not of his liking, but the Portland ministry quickly built up a majority in the House of Commons, and could not be displaced easily. He was further dismayed when the government introduced the India Bill, which proposed to reform the government of India by transferring political power from the Honourable East India Company to Parliamentary commissioners. Although the King actually favoured greater control over the Company, the proposed commissioners were all political allies of Fox. Immediately after the House of Commons passed it, George authorised Lord Temple to inform the House of Lords that he would regard any peer who voted for the bill as his enemy. The bill was rejected by the Lords; three days later, the Portland ministry was dismissed, and William Pitt the Younger was appointed Prime Minister, with Temple as his Secretary of State. On 17 December 1783, Parliament voted in favour of a motion condemning the influence of the monarch in parliamentary voting as a "high crime" and Temple was forced to resign. Temple's departure destabilised the government, and three months later the government lost its majority and Parliament was dissolved; the subsequent election gave Pitt a firm mandate.

William Pitt

For George III, Pitt's appointment was a great victory. It proved that he was able to appoint Prime Ministers on the basis of his own interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords. During and after Pitt's ministry, George III was extremely popular in Britain. The British people admired him for his piety, and for remaining faithful to his wife. He was fond of his children, and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy in 1782 and 1783 respectively. Nevertheless, he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend rigorous lessons from seven in the morning, and to lead lives of religious observance and virtue. When his children strayed from George's own principles of righteousness, as his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed.

However, by this time George's health was deteriorating. He suffered from a mental illness, which was possibly a symptom of the genetic disease, porphyria, although this has been questioned. A study of samples of the King's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of arsenic, a possible trigger for the disease. The source of the arsenic is not known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics. The King may have suffered a brief episode of disease in 1765, but a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to recuperate. It was the furthest he had ever been from London—just short of 100 miles (150 km)—but his condition worsened. In November he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and making his voice hoarse. With his doctors largely at a loss to explain his illness, spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia. Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards, and the King's doctors, who included Francis Willis, treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic poultices to draw out "evil humours".

In the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of the regency. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for George III's eldest son and heir apparent, the Prince of Wales, to act as Regent, to Pitt’s consternation Fox suggested that it was the Prince of Wales's absolute right to act on his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that it was for Parliament to nominate a Regent, and wanted to restrict the Regent's authority. In February 1789, the Regency Bill, authorising the Prince of Wales to act as Prince Regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons, but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George III recovered.

French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

After George’s recovery, his popularity, and that of Pitt, continued to increase at the expense of Fox and the Prince of Wales. His humane and understanding treatment of two insane assailants, Margaret Nicholson in 1786 and John Frith in 1790, contributed to his popularity. A failed attempt to assassinate the King on 15 May 1800 was not political in origin but motivated by the delusions of James Hadfield, who shot at the King in the Drury Lane Theatre. George seemed unperturbed by the incident, so much so that he fell asleep in the interval.

The French Revolution of 1789, in which the French monarchy had been overthrown, worried many British landowners. France declared war on Great Britain in 1793; in the war attempt, George allowed Pitt to increase taxes, raise armies, and suspend the right of ''habeas corpus''. The First Coalition to oppose revolutionary France, which included Austria, Prussia, and Spain, broke up in 1795 when Prussia and Spain made separate peace with France. The Second Coalition, which included Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in 1800. Only Great Britain was left fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic.

A brief lull in hostilities allowed Pitt to concentrate effort on Ireland, where there had been an uprising and attempted French landing in 1798. In 1800, the British and Irish Parliaments both passed an Act of Union, which took effect on 1 January 1801 and united Great Britain and Ireland into a single nation, known as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". George used the opportunity to drop the claim to the Throne of France, which English and British Sovereigns had maintained since the reign of Edward III. It was suggested that George adopt the title "Emperor of the British Isles", but he refused. As part of his Irish policy, Pitt planned to remove certain legal disabilities that applied to Roman Catholics. George III claimed that to emancipate Catholics would be to violate his coronation oath, in which Sovereigns promise to maintain Protestantism. Faced with opposition to his religious reform policies from both the King and the British public, Pitt threatened to resign. At about the same time, the King suffered a relapse of his previous illness, which he blamed on worry over the Catholic question. On 14 March 1801, Pitt was formally replaced by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Henry Addington. Addington opposed emancipation, instituted annual accounts, abolished income tax and began a programme of disarmament. In October 1801, he made peace with the French, and in 1802 signed the Treaty of Amiens.

George did not consider the peace with France as real; in his view it was an "experiment". In 1803, the war resumed but public opinion distrusted Addington to lead the nation in war, and instead favoured Pitt. An invasion of England by Napoleon seemed imminent, and a massive volunteer movement arose to defend England against the French. George's review of 27,000 volunteers in Hyde Park, London, on 26 and 28 October 1803 and at the height of the invasion scare, attracted an estimated 500,000 spectators on each day. ''The Times'' said, "The enthusiasm of the multitude was beyond all expression." A courtier wrote on 13 November that, "The King is really prepared to take the field in case of attack, his beds are ready and he can move at half an hour's warning". George wrote to his friend Bishop Hurd, "We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his threatened invasion ... Should his troops effect a landing, I shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and my other armed subjects, to repel them." After Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of invasion was extinguished.

In 1804, George was again affected by his recurrent illness; after his recovery, Addington resigned and Pitt regained power. Pitt sought to appoint Fox to his ministry, but George III refused. Lord Grenville perceived an injustice to Fox, and refused to join the new ministry. Pitt concentrated on forming a coalition with Austria, Russia, and Sweden. This Third Coalition, however, met the same fate as the First and Second Coalitions, collapsing in 1805. The setbacks in Europe took a toll on Pitt's health and he died in 1806, reopening the question of who should serve in the ministry. Lord Grenville became Prime Minister, and his "Ministry of All the Talents" included Fox. The King was conciliatory towards Fox, after being forced to capitulate over his appointment. After Fox's death in September 1806, the King and ministry were in open conflict. To boost recruitment, the ministry proposed a measure in February 1807 whereby Roman Catholics would be allowed to serve in all ranks of the Armed Forces. George instructed them not only to drop the measure, but also to agree never to set up such a measure again. The ministers agreed to drop the measure then pending, but refused to bind themselves in the future. They were dismissed and replaced by the Duke of Portland as the nominal Prime Minister, with actual power being held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Spencer Perceval. Parliament was dissolved, and the subsequent election gave the ministry a strong majority in the House of Commons. George III made no further major political decisions during his reign; the replacement of the Duke of Portland by Perceval in 1809 was of little actual significance.

Later life

In late 1810, at the height of his popularity but already virtually blind with cataracts and in pain from rheumatism, George III became dangerously ill. In his view the malady had been triggered by the stress he suffered at the death of his youngest and favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. The Princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of distress and crying every day ... were melancholy beyond description." He accepted the need for the Regency Act of 1811, and the Prince of Wales acted as Regent for the remainder of George III's life. By the end of 1811, George III had become permanently insane and lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death.

Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in 1812 (the only British Prime Minister to have suffered such a fate) and was replaced by Lord Liverpool. Liverpool oversaw British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The subsequent Congress of Vienna led to significant territorial gains for Hanover, which was upgraded from an electorate to a kingdom.

Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He suffered from dementia and became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was incapable of knowing or understanding either that he was declared King of Hanover in 1814, or that his wife died in 1818. Over Christmas 1819, he spoke nonsense for 58 hours, and for the last few weeks of his life was unable to walk. He died at Windsor Castle at 8:38 pm on 29 January 1820, six days after the death of his fourth son, the Duke of Kent. His favourite son, Frederick, Duke of York, was with him. George III was buried on 16 February in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

George was succeeded by two of his sons George IV and William IV, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to the only legitimate child of the Duke of Kent, Victoria, the last monarch of the House of Hanover.

Legacy

George III lived for 81 years and 239 days and reigned for 59 years and 96 days: both his life and his reign were longer than those of any of his predecessors. Only Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II lived and reigned longer.

George III was dubbed "Farmer George" by satirists, at first mocking his interest in mundane matters rather than politics but later to contrast his homely thrift with his son's grandiosity and to portray him as a man of the people. Under George III, who was passionately interested in agriculture, the British Agricultural Revolution reached its peak and great advances were made in fields such as science and industry. There was unprecedented growth in the rural population, which in turn provided much of the workforce for the concurrent Industrial Revolution. George's collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now housed in the Science Museum (London); he funded the construction and maintenance of William Herschel's forty-foot telescope, which was the biggest ever built at the time. Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, which he at first named ''Georgium Sidus'' (George's Star) after the King, in 1781.

George III himself hoped that "the tongue of malice may not paint my intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve", but in the popular mind George III has been both demonised and praised. While very popular at the start of his reign, by the mid-1770s George had lost the loyalty of revolutionary American colonists, though it has been estimated that as many as half of the colonists remained loyal. The grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence were presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he had committed to establish an "absolute Tyranny" over the colonies. The Declaration's wording has contributed to the American public's perception of George as a tyrant. Contemporary accounts of George III's life fall into two camps: one demonstrating "attitudes dominant in the latter part of the reign, when the King had become a revered symbol of national resistance to French ideas and French power" and the other "derived their views of the King from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of the reign, and they expressed in their works the views of the opposition". Building on the latter of these two assessments, British historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Trevelyan and Erskine May, promoted hostile interpretations of George III's life. However, in the mid-twentieth century the work of Lewis Namier, who thought George was "much maligned", kick-started a re-evaluation of the man and his reign. Scholars of the later twentieth century, such as Butterfield and Pares, and Macalpine and Hunter, are inclined to treat George sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and illness. Butterfield rejected the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in which an historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance. His capacity for synthesis, and his ability to dovetail the various parts of the evidence ... carried him into a more profound and complicated elaboration of error than some of his more pedestrian predecessors ... he inserted a doctrinal element into his history which, granted his original aberrations, was calculated to project the lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or truth." In pursuing war with the American colonists, George III believed he was defending the right of an elected Parliament to levy taxes, not seeking to expand his own power or prerogatives. In the opinion of modern scholars, during the long reign of George III the monarchy continued to lose its political power, and grew as the embodiment of national morality.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

4 June 1738 – 31 March 1751: ''His Royal Highness'' Prince George

31 March 1751 – 20 April 1751: ''His Royal Highness'' The Duke of Edinburgh

20 April 1751 – 25 October 1760: ''His Royal Highness'' The Prince of Wales

25 October 1760 – 29 January 1820: ''His Majesty'' The King

In Great Britain, George III used the official style "George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and so forth". In 1801, when Great Britain united with Ireland, he dropped his claim to the French Throne. His style became "George the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith."

In Germany, he was ''Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Archtreasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire'' until the end of the empire in 1806. He then continued as Duke until the Congress of Vienna declared him ''King of Hanover'' in 1814.

Arms

Before his succession, George was granted the royal arms differenced by a ''label azure of five points, the centre point bearing a fleur-de-lys or'' on 27 July 1749. Upon his father's death, and along with the dukedom of Edinburgh and the position of heir-apparent, he inherited his difference of a plain ''label argent of three points''. In an additional difference, the crown of Charlemagne was not usually depicted on the arms of the heir, only on the Sovereign's.

From his succession until 1800, George bore the Royal arms: ''Quarterly, I Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a double-tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); IV tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent (for Westfalen), overall an escutcheon Gules charged with the Crown of Charlemagne Or (for the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire)''.

Following the Acts of Union 1800, the royal arms were amended, dropping the French quartering. They became: ''Quarterly, I and IV England; II Scotland; III Ireland; overall an escutcheon of Hanover surmounted by an electoral bonnet.'' In 1816, after the Electorate of Hanover became a kingdom, the electoral bonnet was changed to a crown.

{{Image gallery|width=200|height=200 |Coat of Arms of the Hanoverian Princes of Wales (1714-1760).svg|see adjacent text|Coat of arms from 1751 to 1760 as Prince of Wales |Coat of Arms of Great Britain (1714-1801).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms used from 1760 to 1801 as King of Great Britain |Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom_(1801-1816).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms used from 1801 to 1816 as King of the United Kingdom |Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (1816-1837).svg|See adjacent text|Coat of arms used from 1816 until death }}

Issue

16 August 1763 21 August 1765 29 September 1766 2 November 1767 8 November 1768 22 May 1770 5 June 1771 27 January 1773 24 February 1774 25 April 1776 3 November 1777 23 February 1779 22 September 1780 7 August 1783

style="width:20%;"	Name!! style="width:15%;"|Birth!! style="width:15%;"|Death!! style="width:50%;"|Notes
George IV of the United Kingdom	George IV	12 August 1762
Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany	Frederick, Duke of York	|	5 January 1827	married 1791, Princess Frederica of Prussia; no issue; died aged 63
William IV of the United Kingdom	William IV	|	20 June 1837	married 1818, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen; no legitimate surviving issue; died aged 71
Charlotte, Princess Royal	|	6 October 1828	Frederick I of Württemberg>Frederick, King of Württemberg; no issue; died aged 62
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn	Edward, Duke of Kent	|	23 January 1820	married 1818, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld; had issue (Queen Victoria); died aged 52
Princess Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom	Princess Augusta Sophia	|	22 September 1840	died aged 71
Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom	Princess Elizabeth	|	10 January 1840	Frederick VI of Hesse-Homburg>Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg; no issue; died aged 69
Ernest Augustus I of Hanover	Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, Duke of Cumberland	|	18 November 1851	Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz>Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; had issue; died aged 80
Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex	Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex	|	22 April 1843	married in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772, (1) 1793 Lady Augusta Murray; had issue; marriage declared void 1794; (2) 1831, Cecilia Underwood, Duchess of Inverness
[[Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge	Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge	|	8 July 1850	married 1818, Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel; had issue; died aged 76
Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh	Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester	|	30 April 1857	Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh>Prince William, Duke of Gloucester; no issue; died aged 81
Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom	Princess Sophia	|	27 May 1848	died aged 70
Prince Octavius of Great Britain	Prince Octavius	|	3 May 1783	died aged 4
Prince Alfred of Great Britain	Prince Alfred	|	20 August 1782	died aged 23 months
Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom	Princess Amelia	|	2 November 1810	died aged 27

Ancestors

{{ahnentafel-compact5 |style=font-size: 90%; line-height: 110%; |border=1 |boxstyle=padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0; |boxstyle_1=background-color: #fcc; |boxstyle_2=background-color: #fb9; |boxstyle_3=background-color: #ffc; |boxstyle_4=background-color: #bfc; |boxstyle_5=background-color: #9fe; |1= 1. George III of the United Kingdom |2= 2. Frederick, Prince of Wales |3= 3. Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha |4= 4. George II of Great Britain |5= 5. Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach |6= 6. Frederick II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg |7= 7. Princess Magdalena Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst |8= 8. George I of Great Britain |9= 9. Sophia Dorothea of Celle |10= 10. John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach |11= 11. Princess Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach |12= 12. Frederick I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg |13= 13. Magdalena Sibylle of Saxe-Weissenfels |14= 14. Prince Charles of Anhalt-Zerbst |15= 15. Sophie of Saxe-Weissenfels |16= 16. Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover |17= 17. Sophia, Princess Palatine of the Rhine |18= 18. George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg |19= 19. Eleonore d'Esmier d'Olbreuse |20= 20. Albert II, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach |21= 21. Countess Sophia Margaret of Oettingen-Oettingen |22= 22. John George I, Duke of Saxe-Eisenach |23= 23. Countess Johanetta of Sayn-Wittgenstein |24= 24. Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha |25= 25. Princess Elisabeth Sophie of Saxe-Altenburg |26= 26. August, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels |27= 27. Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin |28= 28. John VI, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst |29= 29. Sophie Augusta of Holstein-Gottorp |30= 30. August, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels (= 26) |31= 31. Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (= 27) }}

See also

Cultural depictions of George III of the United Kingdom

Descendants of George III and Queen Charlotte

List of mentally ill monarchs

Notes

References

Ayling, Stanley (1972). ''George the Third''. London: Collins. ISBN 0-00-211412-7

Black, Jeremy (2006). ''George III: America's Last King''. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11732-9

Brooke, John (1972). ''King George III'' London: Constable. ISBN 0-09-456110-9

Butterfield, Herbert (1957). ''George III and the Historians''. London: Collins.

Cannon, John (2004). "George III (1738–1820)". ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press.

Cannon, John; Griffiths, Ralph (1988). ''The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-822786-8

Carretta, Vincent (1990). ''George III and the Satirists from Hogarth to Byron''. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1146-4

Fraser, Antonia (1975). ''The Lives of the Kings and Queen of England''. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-76911-1

Hibbert, Christopher (1999). ''George III: A Personal History''. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-025737-3

Pares, Richard (1953). ''King George III and the Politicians''. Oxford University Press.

Reitan, E. A. (editor) (1964). ''George III, Tyrant Or Constitutional Monarch?''. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company. A compilation of essays encompassing the major assessments of George III up to 1964.

Röhl, John C. G.; Warren, Martin; Hunt, David (1998). ''Purple Secret: Genes, "Madness" and the Royal Houses of Europe''. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 0-593-04148-8

Trevelyan, George (1912). ''George the Third and Charles Fox: The Concluding Part of the American Revolution''. New York: Longmans, Green.

Watson, J. Steven (1960). ''The Reign of George III, 1760–1815''. London: Oxford University Press.

Weir, Alison (1996). ''Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy, Revised edition''. London: Random House. ISBN 0-7126-7448-9

Further reading

Ditchfield, G. M. (2002). ''George III: An Essay in Monarchy''. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-91962-9

*Conway, Stephen (February 2003). Book Review: ''George III: An Essay in Monarchy''. Institute of Historical Research. Accessed 25 February 2008

May, Thomas Erskine (1896). ''The Constitutional History of England Since the Accession of George the Third, 1760–1860'' 11th ed. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

Category:1738 births Category:1820 deaths Category:Deafblind people Edinburgh 102 Category:Kings of Hanover Category:Monarchs of the United Kingdom Category:Dukes of Bremen and Verden Category:Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg Category:Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg Category:Knights of the Garter Category:Electors of Hanover Category:Monarchs of Great Britain Category:People from Westminster Category:Pretenders to the throne of the kingdom of France (Plantagenet) Category:Princes of Wales Category:Protestant monarchs Category:Regency era Category:18th-century monarchs in Europe Category:19th-century monarchs in Europe Category:Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

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Name	James Clark Ross
Birth date	15 April 1800
Birth place	London
Death date	April 03, 1862
Nationality	British
Known for	Antarctica
Home town	1
Footnotes	}}

Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862), was a British naval officer and explorer. He explored the Arctic with his uncle Sir John Ross and Sir William Parry, and later led his own expedition to Antarctica.

Arctic explorer

Ross was born in London, the nephew of Sir John Ross under whom he entered the navy in 1812, accompanying him on Sir John's first Arctic voyage in search of a Northwest Passage in 1818. Between 1819 and 1827, Ross took part in four Arctic expeditions under Sir William Parry, and in 1829 to 1833, again served under his uncle on Sir John's second Arctic voyage. It was during this trip that they located the position of the North Magnetic Pole on 1 June 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in the far north of Canada. It was on this trip, too, that Ross charted the Beaufort Islands, later renamed Clarence Islands by his uncle.

In 1834, Ross was promoted to captain, and from 1835 to 1838, he was employed on the magnetic survey of Great Britain.

Antarctic explorer

Between 1839 and 1843 Ross commanded an Antarctic expedition comprising the vessels HMS ''Erebus'' and HMS ''Terror'' and charted much of the coastline of the continent. Support for the expedition had been arranged by Francis Beaufort hydrographer of the Navy and a member of several scientific societies. On the expedition was Joseph Dalton Hooker who had been invited along as assistant surgeon. ''Erebus'' and ''Terror'' were bomb vessels – an unusual type of warship named after the mortar bombs they were designed to fire and constructed with extremely strong hulls, to withstand the recoil of the mortars, which were to prove of great value in thick ice.

In 1841, James Ross discovered the Ross Sea, Victoria Land, and the volcanoes Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, which were named for the expedition's vessels. They sailed for along the edge of the low, flat-topped ice shelf they called the Victoria Barrier, later named "Ross Ice Shelf" in his honour. In the following year, he attempted to penetrate south at about 55°W, and explored the eastern side of what is now known as James Ross Island, discovering and naming Snow Hill Island and Seymour Island. It is noteworthy that Ross reported that Admiralty Sound was blocked by glaciers at its southern end, providing evidence for a much greater extent for the ice shelves in Prince Gustav Channel and the northern Larsen Ice Shelf.

On his return, Ross was knighted, and was also nominated to the French order of the Legion d'Honneur. In 1847, he published his account of the expedition under the title of ''A Voyage of Discovery and Research to Southern and Antarctic Regions''. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1848, and in that year made his last expedition, as captain of HMS ''Enterprise'', accompanied by HMS ''Investigator'', in the first expedition in search of Sir John Franklin.

James was married to Lady Ann Ross. He died at Aylesbury in 1862, five years after his wife. A blue plaque marks Ross's home in Eliot Place, Blackheath, London. His closest friend was Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier with whom he sailed many times. Crozier has never been found after he participated in The Franklin Expedition and became leader after the death of Sir John Franklin.

James also lived in the ancient country house of the Abbotts of St Albans, later known as The Abbey, Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire. He is buried with his wife in the local churchyard. In the gardens of the Abbey there is a lake with two islands, named after the ships ''Terror'' and ''Erebus''.

Tributes

The Ross seal, one of the four Antarctic phocids, first described during the expedition of 1839-1843.

The James Ross Strait, in the Canadian province of Nunavut, is named after him.

Named after James Ross, the Ross Ice Shelf is Antarctica's largest ice shelf.

is a British Antarctic Survey research ship.

The crater Ross on the Moon is jointly named after James Clark Ross and Frank Elmore Ross.

Ross's Gull, a small gull, the only species in its genus, that breeds in the high arctic of northernmost North America and northeast Siberia.

See also

European and American voyages of scientific exploration

References

''The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration From Frobisher to Ross'' - E C Coleman - 2006 ISBN 0-7524-3660-0

''The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration From Franklin to Scott'' - E C Coleman - 2006

External links

Category:English explorers Category:Explorers of the Arctic Category:Explorers of Antarctica Category:19th-century explorers Category:Royal Navy officers Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Anglo-Scots Category:1800 births Category:1862 deaths Category:British polar explorers Category:National Historic Persons of Canada

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