ABSTRACT
George III certainly never forgot the political maelstrom he created in the early years of his reign, and thereafter clung limpet-like to any premier minister who showed the least capacity. The root cause of the collapse of the old political order was the removal of the Whig-Tory antagonism that had sustained it for so long. George Grenville, normally a hard-nosed and unbending politician, reduced to meekly offering amendments to his Cider excise in 1763 at the first sign of serious opposition to the tax from the Independent MPs representing the cider counties. The impact of George III's behaviour on the Tory party was devastating. His ostentatious Englishness appealed to their ingrained anti-Hanoverianism. The frenetic rise and fall of ministries in the 1760s, and partly through fear of the social radicalism aroused and epitomised by John Wilkes and his supporters, congenial elements of formerly Tory ideology began to be absorbed into the general discourse of the political establishment in Britain.
