America's Fall Guy

King George III has long been cast as the crazed despot who squandered America. Yet, argues Andrew Roberts, this grim characterisation is the result not of hard facts but a historical stitch-up

- Andrew Roberts

The words ring down the ages: “A prince, whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Thomas Jefferson's description of King George III in the Declaration of Independence has been taken virtually as holy writ in the United States, where scarcely a day goes by when George is not described as a tyrant, despot or dictator in some newspaper or website. In Britain the verdict is predictably less harsh, but he is still primarily known as the mad king who suffered from a rare disease of the blood called porphyria and lost the American colonies, probably because he was mad.

Thomas Paine, one of the greatest propagandists of the 18th century, called George the cruellest sovereign tyrant of this age”, a butcher and that wicked tyrannical brute (nay worse than brute) of Great Britain”. This theme was picked up by the Whig historians of the 19th century: George Otto Trevelyan described George as “a ruler who cherished every abuse in church and state”. Not to be outdone, his son George Macaulay Trevelyan, in his hugely influential History of England, castigated “the attempt of George III to recover the powers of the crown, and put Britain's defeat in the American War of Independence entirely down to “the unbending stubbornness of George III”.

Today, Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant and award-winning Hamilton: An American Musical portrays George III as comic yet cruel, camp yet sinister. “You'll remember you belong to me,”a sardonic, preening, pompous monarch sings in his cameo appearances, and: “I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.