Editing George III (section)

== Mid reign ==
===Government ===
[[File:National-Debt-Gillray.jpeg|thumb|In ''A new way to pay the National Debt'' (1786), [[James Gillray]] caricatured King George III and Queen Charlotte awash with treasury funds to cover royal debts, with Pitt handing him another [[money bag]].|alt=Centre: George III, drawn as a paunchy man with pockets bulging with gold coins, receives a wheel-barrow filled with money-bags from William Pitt, whose pockets also overflow with coin. To the left, a quadriplegic veteran begs on the street. To the right, George, Prince of Wales, is depicted dressed in rags.]]
With the collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham became prime minister for the second time, but died within months. The King then appointed [[Lord Shelburne]] to replace him. [[Charles James Fox]], however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of [[William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland]]. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the [[Fox–North Coalition]]. Portland became prime minister, with Fox and Lord North, as foreign secretary and home secretary respectively.<ref name=dnb/>

The King disliked Fox intensely, for his politics as well as his character: he thought Fox unprincipled and a bad influence on the Prince of Wales.<ref>e.g. Ayling, p. 281.</ref> George III was distressed at having to appoint ministers not of his liking, but the Portland ministry quickly built up a majority in the House of Commons, and could not be displaced easily. He was further dismayed when the government introduced the India Bill, which proposed to reform the government of India by transferring political power from the [[East India Company]] to Parliamentary commissioners.<ref>Hibbert, p. 243; Pares, p. 120.</ref> Although George actually favoured greater control over the company, the proposed commissioners were all political allies of Fox.<ref>Brooke, pp. 250–251.</ref> Immediately after the House of Commons passed it, George authorised [[George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham|Lord Temple]] to inform the [[House of Lords]] that he would regard any peer who voted for the bill as his enemy. The bill was rejected by the Lords; three days later, the Portland ministry was dismissed, and [[William Pitt the Younger]] was appointed prime minister, with Temple as his secretary of state. On 17 December 1783, Parliament voted in favour of a motion condemning the influence of the monarch in parliamentary voting as a "high crime" and Temple was forced to resign. Temple's departure destabilised the government, and three months later the government lost its majority and Parliament was dissolved; the subsequent [[1784 British general election|election]] gave Pitt a firm mandate.<ref name=dnb/>

[[File:Daughters of King George III.jpg|thumb|left|''The Three Youngest Daughters of King George III'' by [[John Singleton Copley]], {{c.|1785}}, depicting: Princesses [[Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh|Mary]] (left with tambourine), [[Princess Sophia of the United Kingdom|Sophia]] (upper right), and [[Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom|Amelia]] (baby).|alt=Imaginary garden scene with birds of paradise, vines laden with grapes, and architectural columns. The two young princesses and their baby sister wear fine dresses and play with three spaniels and a tambourine.]]
Pitt's appointment was a great victory for George. It proved that the King could appoint prime ministers on the basis of his own interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords.<ref>Watson, pp. 272–279.</ref> During and after Pitt's ministry, George was extremely popular in Britain.<ref>Brooke, p. 316; Carretta, pp. 262, 297.</ref> The British people admired him for his piety and for remaining faithful to his wife.<ref>Brooke, p. 259.</ref> He was fond of his children and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy, in 1782 and 1783 respectively.<ref>Ayling, p. 218.</ref> Nevertheless, he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend rigorous lessons from seven in the morning and to lead lives of religious observance and virtue.<ref>Ayling, p. 220.</ref> When his children strayed from George's principles of righteousness, as his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed.<ref>Ayling, pp. 222–230, 366–376.</ref>

===Illness===
[[File:GeorgeIIIGuinea.jpg|left|thumb|Gold [[Guinea (British coin)|guinea]] of George III, 1789|alt=Gold coin bearing the profile of a round-headed George wearing a classical Roman-style haircut and a laurel wreath.]]
By this time, George's health was deteriorating. He had a mental illness characterised by acute [[mania]]. Until the mid-20th century, the King's illness was generally considered to be psychological. In 1966, a study by Ida Macalpine and [[Richard Alfred Hunter|Richard Hunter]] suggested that the illness was physiological, caused by the liver disorder [[porphyria]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Macalpine |first1=Ida |last2=Hunter |first2=Richard |title=The "Insanity" of King George III: a Classic Case of Porphyria|journal=[[British Medical Journal]]|volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=65–71 |date=1966|doi=10.1136/bmj.1.5479.65 |pmid=5323262 |pmc=1843211 }}</ref> Although meeting with some contemporary opposition,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Robb-Smith |first=A.H.T.|title=George III and the Mad-Business by Ida Macalpine, Richard Hunter: Review|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/563552|journal=[[The English Historical Review]] |volume=85 |issue=333|pages=808–810 |date=1970|jstor=563552 }}</ref> the view subsequently gained widespread scholarly acceptance.<ref>Röhl, Warren, and Hunt.</ref> A study of samples of George's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of [[arsenic]], a cause of metabolic blood disorders and thus a possible trigger for porphyria. The source of the arsenic is not known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cox, Timothy M. |last2=Jack |first2=N. |last3=Lofthouse |first3=S. |last4=Watling |first4=J. |last5=Haines |first5=J. |last6=Warren |first6=M. J. |title=King George III and porphyria: an elemental hypothesis and investigation |journal=[[The Lancet]] |volume=366 |issue=9482 |pages=332–335 |date=2005 |pmid=16039338 |s2cid=13109527 |doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(05)66991-7}}</ref> The theory was also established in the public mind through influential dramatisations, such as [[Alan Bennett]]'s play ''[[The Madness of George III]]'', and in [[Nicholas Hytner]]'s subsequent [[The Madness of King George|film]]. From 2010, this view has been increasingly challenged, and Macalpine and Hunter's study criticised.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Peters |first1=Timothy J. |last2=Wilkinson |first2=D. |title=King George III and porphyria: a clinical re-examination of the historical evidence |journal=History of Psychiatry |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=3–19 |date=2010 |pmid=21877427 |s2cid=22391207 |doi=10.1177/0957154X09102616}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Peters |first1=T. |title=King George III, bipolar disorder, porphyria and lessons for historians |journal=Clinical Medicine |date=June 2011 |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=261–264 |doi=10.7861/clinmedicine.11-3-261 |pmid=21902081|pmc=4953321}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rentoumi |first1=V. |last2=Peters |first2=T. |last3=Conlin |first3=J. |last4=Garrard|first4=P. |title=The acute mania of King George III: A computational linguistic analysis |journal=[[PLOS One]] |volume=3 |issue=12 |pages=e0171626 |date=2017 |bibcode=2017PLoSO..1271626R |pmc=5362044 |pmid=28328964 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0171626 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Recent scholarship discounts the porphyria theory and contends that George's illness was psychiatric, most probably [[bipolar disorder]].<ref>Roberts, pp. 677–680</ref>

George may have had a brief episode of disease in 1765, and a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to [[Cheltenham Spa]] to recuperate and in August visited the [[Bishop of Worcester]] at [[Hartlebury Castle]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Parishes: Hartlebury Pages 380–387 A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 3. |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol3/pp380-387 |website=British History Online |publisher=Victoria County History, 1918 |access-date=10 June 2023}}</ref> and [[Earl of Mount Edgcumbe|Viscount Mount Edgcumbe]] at [[Cotehele]], Cornwall, with the Queen, and their daughters the Princess Royal and Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth.<ref>{{cite web |title=Parishes: Callington – St Columb Pages 51–67 Magna Britannia: Volume 3, Cornwall. |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/magna-britannia/vol3/pp51-67 |website=British History Online |publisher=Cadell & Davies, London 1814 |access-date=10 June 2023}}</ref> It was the furthest he had ever been from London, but his condition worsened. In November of that year, he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and his voice to become hoarse. George would frequently repeat himself and write sentences with over 400 words at a time, and his vocabulary became "more complex, creative and colourful", possible symptoms of bipolar disorder.<ref>{{cite news |title=Was George III a manic depressive? |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22122407 |publisher=[[BBC News]] |date=15 April 2013 |access-date=23 July 2018}}</ref> His doctors were largely at a loss to explain his illness, and spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he had shaken hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the [[Frederick William II of Prussia|King of Prussia]].<ref>Ayling, pp. 329–335; Brooke, pp. 322–328; Fraser, pp. 281–282; Hibbert, pp. 262–267.</ref> Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards; George's doctors, who included [[Francis Willis (physician)|Francis Willis]], treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic [[poultice]]s to draw out "evil humours".<ref>Ayling, pp. 334–343; Brooke, p. 332; Fraser, p. 282.</ref>

In the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of a regency during the King's incapacity. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for the Prince of Wales to act as regent, Fox suggested, to Pitt's consternation, that it was the Prince's absolute right to act on his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that it was for Parliament to nominate a regent, and wanted to restrict the regent's authority.<ref>Ayling, pp. 338–342; Hibbert, p. 273.</ref> In February 1789, the [[Regency Acts#Regency Bill 1789|Regency Bill]], authorising the Prince of Wales to act as regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons, but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George recovered.<ref>Ayling, p. 345.</ref>