Education and political aims or George III.
After the prince's death, the old king had transferred his dislike to his son's widow and his grandson. George III. had therefore been brought up almost in seclusion. The most notable point in his education was that his mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had taught him to despise his grandfather and his grandfather's position in the State. He had been told from his earliest years that the position of a sovereign who allowed himself to be led and governed by his ministers was degrading. "When you come to the throne," we are told that his mother said, "George, be king." The idea had taken root, and the young prince had made up his mind that he should rule his ministers, not his ministers him. That the cabinet should be responsible to the king as well as to Parliament, was the keystone of his theory. He would have the choice of his ministers lie in his own hands, not in those of the great Whig houses. George did not wish to rule unconstitutionally, to fly in the face of Parliament, or to govern without it, as the Stuarts had tried to do. He had, indeed, such a belief in his own good intentions, that he thought that they must coincide with the nation's will, and there were circumstances which for some time bore him out in his view.
His character.
George's main bent was to assert his individuality, and take the chief share in the governance of the country. The other features of his character are easy to describe. His tastes were frugal, and his private life strictly virtuous, a thing which had not been known in an English king for more than a century. He was sincerely pious, though, as some critics observed, he was better at scenting out other persons' sins than his own. He had an enormous capacity for hard work, though no very great brain-power to guide him through it. He had a great share of self-restraint and reticence, so that it was not easy to guess what plans he had in hand when he did not wish them to be known. Above all, he was terribly obstinate, with the obstinacy of a good-hearted man, who feels he is in the right, and believes that he will be doing wrong if he gives up his own opinion. Lastly, though he had no power of appreciating greatness of any kind (he called Shakespeare "sad stuff, only one must not say so," and thought Pitt a bombastic old actor), yet he had great penetration in measuring littleness in others. This made him exceedingly fitted to cope with the average Whig statesmen of his day.
His popularity.
When George came to the throne he was greeted with the usual popularity which attends a new and untried sovereign. He showed himself affable and good-tempered, a model of decorum and respectability, and won all hearts by his English habits and prejudices. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been Germans in mind and language. George III. took the first opportunity of declaring that he was English born and bred, and that "he gloried in the name of Briton." By so doing he won all men's hearts. Thus in the beginning of his struggle with the Whigs he had the inestimable advantage of personal popularity with the nation.
The "King's Friends."
The king had, as we have already said, passed his youth in seclusion, with few friends and no organized band of retainers. He had to build up his own party, if he wished to carry out his schemes. This he at once began to do. Descending into the arena of politics, he set to work to make himself a following, much as Newcastle or Walpole had done in a previous generation. But George, unlike those statesmen, had not to rely on bribery or borough-mongering alone. He could count on all the prestige and attraction which surrounds the crown, to draw men into his net. Some of the "King's Friends" (as his followers grew to be called) were politicians bought by pensions or titles, but many were honest supporters, who found their pleasure in displaying their loyalty to the crown.
The king and the Tories.