| George III (Hannover) Hanover is managed by the England Project. Join: England Project Discuss: england |
Contents |
King George III is the third longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom after Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria
The future King George was born at Norfolk House, St. James’s Square, Westminster, Middlesex, England on 24 May 1738 to Frederick, Prince of Wales the heir apparent to the throne, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. [1] [2] The London Gazette reported that the hasty baptism "was occasioned by some dangerous Symptoms that appeared at first, though they are now happily over..." [3]
As he could not be baptised twice according to the canon law of the Anglican Church, he was publicly named as George William Frederick on 21 June 1738 at a ceremony also held at Norfolk House by the Lord Bishop of Oxford Thomas Secker who earlier also performed the private baptism.[4] His Godfathers were the King of Sweden and the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and his Godmother was the Queen of Prussia. [5]
He was second in line to the throne at birth (higher in the order of precedence than his father's siblings or his own elder sister) and became heir to the throne aged 13 upon his father's death in 1751. At that time, his grandfather officially confirmed the titles which were his father's and bestowed the title of Prince of Wales: [6]
In the same issue of the Gazette, the death and lying in state was announced of the King of Sweden, George's godfather.
On 25 October 1760 his grandfather King George II died at the age of 76 at Kensington Palace.
On the following day, 26 October, at a ceremony at Carleton House before the Lords of the Privy Council, George was declared
He was the first Hanoverian monarch to be born in England and to use English as his first language.
He would also be the last British monarch to lay a claim to the throne of France.
He was 22 years old.
George married the 17 year old German aristocrat Princess Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz at an evening service on 8 September 1761 at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, by the same Thomas Secker who had performed George's baptism, and was now Archbishop of Canterbury. They had not met before the arranged marriage. [8] [9] Three days later a Royal proclamation was issued that from forthwith all daily prayers in the Church of England litany and any "publick service" now had to include prayers for "Our Gracious Queen Charlotte, Her Royal Highness, the Princess Dowager of Wales and all the Royal Family" [9]
With the wedding complete, the couple were crowned King and Queen Consort at a ceremony at the "Abbey Church in Westminster" on 22 September 1761. [10]
George and Charlotte had fifteen children over a period of 21 years, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. They included two future British monarchs, George IV and William IV.
Two boys, Octavius and Alfred died young.
George had no acknowledged mistresses during the time he was married, and no known illegitimate children. A story of a liaison with a married Quaker woman named Hannah Lightfoot who was said to have borne him up to three children, has no supporting evidence.
George purchased Buckingham House (now Buckingham Palace) for his wife and commissioned the gold state coach seen in modern Royal events. He was the first king to formally study science and and took a keen interest in improving agricultural practices. This led to him acquiring the nickname "Farmer George" from his detractors. He started a new royal collection of books, 65,000 of which were later given to the British Museum. [11]
At his accession on 26 October 1760, George was the holder of four distinct Royal titles.
The Acts of Union 1800 formally combined the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland and led to the formation of a new political entity - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, now commonly abbreviated to the United Kingdom. This came into being on 1 January 1801 by proclamation of the King now styled "George the Third by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith". [12] This entity would last until 1922 when Ireland (apart from the 6 counties of the province of Ulster) gained its independence as a separate sovereign state.
The holder of the crown of England had laid a claim to the crown of France since the Treaty of Troyes in 1422 which gave the title to the heirs of Henry V. [13] Despite the French having an established monarchy of their own from this time onwards, the Kingdom of France was always part of the styling of the title of the monarch of England, and latterly of Great Britain.
The French Republic was established in 1792, and in peace negotiations to end the British-French war in 1797, the French demanded that the British monarch removed the title. No formal agreement was made, but at the Act of Union 1800, the new Royal coat of Arms no longer contained the French Fleur-de-lys. [14]
The Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg had been ruled in personal union with the crown of Great Britain since the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Act of Union 1707. These acts ensured that the Protestant succession of the British crown would continue through the descendants of Electress Sophia of Hanover.
It was ruled by the Privy Council of Hanover (the capital city of the Electorate). George was ruler in name only - he never visited the place.
[15]
George ruled in Great Britain as a Constitutional Monarch. [16] All governmental policies had to be agreed by Parliament, but the London Gazette (the official organ of British Governmental communication) shows that he and his sons were in regular attendance at Privy Council meetings.
These two following pieces of legislation introduced by George directly affected his family and the monarchs who were to succeed him.
He was party to the renegotiations of the terms of the Civil List payments by which the members of the Royal Family and their households are financed. In 1760 at the beginning of his reign, he exchanged the revenues from all his property (the Crown Estate) for a fixed yearly amount from Parliament. Parliament would, for the first time, be responsible for financing the costs of civil government which previously had been the responsibility of the monarch. [17] This Civil List negotiation has happened for every monarch of the United Kingdom since George's reign. [18]
The Royal Marriages Act 1772 or An Act for the Better Regulating of Future Marriages of the Royal Family was personally given royal assent by George in person at the Houses of Parliament on 1 April 1772. [19] This means of controlling the ability of the royal family to make "unsuitable marriages" was proposed by George after his brother Henry, Duke of Cumberland married the commoner Anne Horton. [20] [21]
From the age of 50 onwards, George was affected by a relapsing illness, possibly porphyria, which caused blindness and mental health problems.
His physical and mental conditions led to the establishment of a formal Regency in 1811. The Regent was his eldest son, the future George IV.
Sophia died in 1818 at the age of 74 years and was buried in the Royal Vault which George had commissioned at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. [22]
George was 81 years old when he died. He was buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Berkshire on 16 February 1820, in the Royal Vault with his wife Sophia and the three of their children who had predeceased them. [22]
This biography does not attempt to comprehensively cover George's sixty year reign and the events both in Britain and abroad which shaped a rapidly changing world. There are plenty of good history books for that. Britain moved from being mainly agricultural to a full-on industrial revolution. There were frequent wars and revolution in Europe. The British Empire expanded and in some areas contracted.
As the British Sovereign throughout the American Revolutionary wars, George was identified by the Colonists as the figurehead of a British Parliament which denied them direct representation.
The transcript of the Declaration of Independence 4 July 1776 states: [24]
In Britain, King George III is now remembered as the Mad King, because of the play The Madness of George III (1991) by the English playwright Alan Bennett, afterwards the film The Madness of King George. [25]
After his death, his personal library of nearly 64,000 books was donated to the newly created British Museum in 1823. Now it is housed in the British Library building at St Pancras, London in a six storey glass edifice known as the "King's Library". [26]
This royal dynasty is known as the House of Hanover in Britain, from the name of the city capital of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
In the text of the Act of Settlement 1701 the name of the Electoress Sophia is spelled both Hanover and Hannover. [27]
The city is spelled Hannover in German.
All derivatives of the Royal name used in Britain and its colonies after the accession of George I spell the word Hanover (Hanover Square, Hanover County) with one ‘’N’’ .
The family name of the Electors of Hanover was Guelph or Welf. [28]
The Hanoverian monarchs styled themselves "of Great Britain etc." or used their titles of nobility rather than a surname.
See also
Wikidata: Item Q127318
Have you taken a DNA test? If so, login to add it. If not, see our friends at Ancestry DNA.
Featured National Park champion connections: George III is 12 degrees from Theodore Roosevelt, 14 degrees from Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, 12 degrees from George Catlin, 15 degrees from Marjory Douglas, 24 degrees from Sueko Embrey, 15 degrees from George Grinnell, 18 degrees from Anton Kröller, 11 degrees from Stephen Mather, 17 degrees from Kara McKean, 18 degrees from John Muir, 2 degrees from Victoria Hanover and 24 degrees from Charles Young on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
H > Hannover | H > Hanover > George William Frederick (Hannover) Hanover
Categories: Knights Companion of the Garter, George II creation | Princes of Wales | Westminster, Middlesex (London) | Windsor, Berkshire | Featured Royalty | Dukes of Edinburgh | Monarchs of Great Britain | Monarchs of the United Kingdom | England, Monarchs | Scotland, Monarchs | Wales, Monarchs | Ireland, Monarchs | Time Team | Featured Connections Archive 2020 | House of Hanover
The article references a new book: The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III "The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy." https://www.amazon.com/dp/198487926X?tag=smithsonianco-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
edited by Shirlea Smith
Thanks!
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wettin-windsor-changing-royal-name/
1) Ouch: "Hannover aka Hanover"
Do we REALLY need to spell Hannover both ways? It's bad enough we're repeating "Great Britain" twice in a row; do we need to repeat Hanover and Hannover to?
2) If we are really insistent on using both, consider using as the trailing variant the full name: "Brunswick-Lüneburg of Hanover" so we get the single-en Hanover while not just making a list of different ways to spell the same word.
3) Why is "George III" in parens? Is that the convention for monarchs and other nobility with regnal names and numbers? I don't think we're doing that consistently. It wouldn't be horrid would it to just put the "George III" in this monarch nickname, which we're already kind of abusing.
4) Can we shorten United Kingdom to omit its subordinate clauses? It's HIS name we're trying to capture here, not the full name of the kingdom or his full styles etc, which god help us if we need to include all the Defender Of The Faiths and titular kingdoms others have held, in their notional nicknames. Let's focus on the USER of the site.
Thoughts?
Wouldn't this be easier on the eye, for a million visitors:
George William Frederick "King George III of the United Kingdom" Hannover, formerly of Great Britain, aka Brunswick-Lüneburg of Hanover
Thanks in advance for your time, efforts, and feedback!
While I'm no expert in this history, a quick scan of online sources, eg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_formation_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Nations_of_the_UK.png
... indicates they were all born to the reigning monarchs of GB (not UK), and thus should all be LNAB of Great Britain, here on Wikitree.
A year has passed since the comment below. What's the plan? Who's doing the work, going forward?
Because the family spanned the transition from GB to UK, this seems like a really good test case for validating (or indicting) our current sitewide style policy regarding naming conventions. Can we make it work, with the site policy and database fields as-is:
Assuming we have no ability to customize the syntax (order of display fields) for specific profiles; and assuming we have no ability to alter that, then we need to make do with:
[First-Name] [Middle-Name(s)] ([LNAB]) [Current-Surname], formerly [Other-Surnames]
Is that correct?
So for example, in the simplest case, with no middle name and no marriage, or special titles etc, we have George's favorite child, Amelia who fell in love with a soldier beneath her station:
1. Amelia (Hannover) of the United Kingdom, formerly Great Britain
i.e. 'Amelia' '(Hannover)' 'of the United Kingdom', formerly 'Great Britain'
And in a more complicated case:
2. Charlotte Augusta Matilda (Hanover) von Württemberg, Queen of Wurttemberg, formerly "Princess Royal" of Great Britain
i.e 'Charlotte' 'Augusta Matilda' '(Hanover)' 'von Württemberg, Queen of Wurttemberg', formerly '"Princess Royal" of Great Britain'
In the latter case we are playing a bit fast and loose with what info is supposed to go where, to optimize the way it looks when displayed at the top of our page. There are many alternatives that might be more correct in a stalinist policy sense, but the above example looks pretty good and isn't terribly abusive of what the database fields are supposed to have in them.
Note that in that case "Princess Royal" is just in typed quotes within the other surnames field (not a nickname getting robo-quotes from the HTML/CSS) because we don't want it appearing* before her LNAB or her married name. Also note her married named includes her title as consort as a comma-separated concatenation with her husband's family name. While in this particular case this is redundant, it typically won't be eg "Blah Blah (Piast) Queen of France, formerly Princess of Poland" etc.
Thoughts?
Note: Regular Prince Princess titles (especially stuff like Infanta) really want to precede the given name, not get stuffed into nicknames so they precede the surname. We should fix that somehow. In the meantime, I would be OK wiht omitting them entirely, so for exmaple in Charlotte's case above we could omit both the "Princess Royal of" part of the alternate surname; and, the Queen of Wurttemberg title tack-on to her married name as well. Then she would look like this:
2b) Charlotte Augusta Matilda (Hanover) von Württemberg, formerly of Great Britain
In the annoying edge case where the home-country changes names before she marries into her consort-country, then it probably would be correct (but look a little gross) to do:
2c) Charlotte Augusta Matilda (Hanover) von Württemberg, formerly of Great Britain, and of the United Kingdom
... ie in sequential order.
In this particular case, perhaps it would be slightly less awkward-looking for the profile managers or a style ombud project team to re-sequence her "formerlies" and/or simplify to either:
2d) Charlotte Augusta Matilda (Hanover) von Württemberg, formerly of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
or:
2e) Charlotte Augusta Matilda (Hanover) von Württemberg, formerly of Great Britain, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland