ABSTRACT
‘The History of the present king of Great Britain’, charged the Declaration of Independence, ‘is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations.’ George was born at Norfolk House, London, at 7.30 on the morning of 4 June 1738. George may have got his backwardness from his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales. Bute was able to strengthen George’s intense sense of duty and belief that true security could only be found in winning his people’s love, by playing on the young man’s physical development. George’s reign saw revolutionary changes that swept not just the realm, but the whole of the known world – the Industrial Revolution, the French and American Revolutions, the first British embassy to China and the first settlements in Australia, a defeat in America unknown since the loss of England’s French possessions nearly half a millennium before, and a world war against Napoleon not to be repeated until the catastrophe of 1914–18.
