"The Last King of America," Andrew Roberts

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

The Last King of America, Andrew Roberts

April 9, 2022

 

“Because he was in fact a civilized, good-natured, Christian and enlightened monarch…

subject to moral and ethical restraints…he did not fight the kind of scorched-earth

campaign that every other contemporary despotic power would have fought.”

                                                                                                                                Andrew Roberts (1963-)

                                                                                                                                The Last King of America, 2021

 

As a British historian, Andrew Roberts is indefatigable. He has written extensively on the Second World War. His biographies of Napoleon (2015) and Churchill (2018) are among the most definitive. He was the right person to continue Churchill’s 1958 opus, A History of the English-Speaking People, with his 2007 A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900. In The Last King of America, preparatory to the semiquincentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, he addresses the common perception of a tyrannical and “mad” King George III, an image derived from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and from a series of accusations in the Declaration of Independence, an image ingrained in the minds of American school children and popularized in the Broadway show, Hamilton.

 

The title suggests this biography is aimed at an American audience, with a third of the book devoted to the eight years between the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. His point is not that the colonists were wrong in pursuing independence; in fact, he embraces self-government and admires the colonists for pursuing freedom, and he refers to the United States’ Constitution as the “jewel of the Enlightenment.” His objection is for the portrayal of George III as a crazed and tyrannical ruler. The use of hyperbole by colonists who sought independence, Mr. Roberts writes, was to garner support from those who preferred to remain an English colony.

 

Like a lawyer pleading his case before a jury, Mr. Roberts takes us through his extensive research, which includes access to 200,000 pages of previously unavailable documents and letters, which helped define the man. Unlike most lawyers, however, Roberts has a sense of humor. When he writes of George III urging his eldest son, George Frederick (later George IV), to read more history, the historian Andrew Roberts adds, parenthetically, that the study of history is “always fine advice for everybody at all times.” 

 

In this long but readable biography, the cartoonish figure of George III, who has inhabited our imagination for generations, becomes a real person, whose devotion is to his family, his people and his country. We learn of his myriad interests, from gardening and farming to science, art and music. He was an enlightened traditionalist. In May 1798 (in a letter anticipating President Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural), George wrote to his Prime Minister William Pitt who had just fought a duel: “I trust what has happened will never be repeated…Public characters have no right to weigh alone what they owe to themselves; they must consider also what is due to their country.”  Those are not the words of a tyrannical king. They evoke empathy. Unlike some of his contemporaries, George III did not believe in the divine rights of kings. “But he did,” Roberts writes, “believe in the near-divinity of the British constitution.” Mr. Roberts does not shy from the King’s mental relapses – likely, he tells us, some form of manic depression – but those bouts, with the exception of a few weeks in 1765, occurred after the American Revolution. However, it is true that in the last ten years of his 60-year reign, a regency was created, as he could no longer function.

 

 

George III was Great Britain’s third longest reigning monarch (1760-1820), after Victoria and the current Elizabeth II. During his reign, Britain overcame the loss of the American colonies, survived the revolutionary fervor unleashed on Europe by the French Revolution, defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, was victorious over Napoleon at Waterloo and saw Great Britain emerge as the world’s largest empire. His final years witnessed the end of continental wars that had enshrouded Europe for centuries. His reign began in the Age of Enlightenment and saw the birth of the Industrial Revolution, which removed millions from rural poverty and lifted life expectancy in England by 40 percent.

 

At 676 pages, with another 80 pages of notes, bibliography and index, this biography may appear anachronistic in our digitalized 21^st Century lifestyles when, according to a 2015 Microsoft study, the average human attention span is eight seconds, shorter than that of a goldfish. Nevertheless, for those willing to put in the time, this book – a pleasure to read – will add to your knowledge…and may, as it did mine, change your opinion of George III.