The Madness of George III

I’m sorry.

I’ve shamefully neglected this blog, but I will add an excuse in an attempt to exonerate myself. I have a publishing contract with Etopia Press for Moonstone Obsession and I’m thrilled to bits.

In the world of romance novels Moonstone Obsession falls in to a genre called Regency but technically this is not correct.

The Regency period, the time when King George III’s son, The Prince of Wales rules England in his father’s stead, was only for a short amount of time –  from 1811 until he ascended the throne in his own right in 1820.

Historians have broadened the Regency era to cover 1795 to the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837, nimbly skipping through the seven year reign of William IV.

Despite Moonstone Obsession-  being set in 1790 – falling outside of this period there is a very intriguing connection.

In 1788, the year that Captain Arthur Phillip stepped ashore at Sydney Cove, King George was exhibiting signs of ‘madness’.

The King may have suffered a brief episode of disease in 1765, but a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to recuperate. It was the furthest he had ever been from London—but his condition worsened. In November he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and making his voice hoarse. With his doctors largely at a loss to explain his illness, spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia.

England was still reeling from the loss of the colonies in America’s War of Independence and had suffered internal scandal through the troubled Parliamentary stewardship of the Fox-North coalition when William Pitt The Younger, at the age of 24 became Britain’s youngest and later, longest serving Prime Minister.

Just an aside, William Pitt The Younger was played on the big screen by my current favourite actor Benedict Cumberbatch, of Sherlock fame.

Into this mess, aged just 28, Pitt was forced into political chess game for his very career.

King George III was mad and as a result, couldn’t be head of state.

Charles Fox, backed by the ambitious and profligate Prince of Wales proposed a regency bill that would give him the power rule in his father’s stead and inevitably lead to the remove of William Pitt from office, despite being popularly elected with a reputation for being an ‘honest Billy’.

The power of the Crown, however, was still so great that it was assumed on all hands that, if the prince became regent, Pitt would be dismissed and the government would pass to a Fox ministry. The curious spectacle was seen of the Whigs, led by Fox, asserting the hereditary prerogative in a most uncompromising form, while Pitt and the Tories were the champions of the rights of parliament, the paradox being partly accounted for by the suspicion that if the Whig doctrine were carried and the prince became in effect king, the king himself would not recover power even if he recovered his health.

English public opinion was with Pitt, and demanded the limitation of the powers which should be conferred upon the prince as regent, and the recognition of the principle that he could not claim the regency as a constitutional right. There was no precedent for the situation, but in any case it was felt that the regency of the prince would involve Pitt’s retirement. The position, however, was saved by the king’s recovery before the Regency Bill had passed through the Lords. Pitt, instead of being driven into private life, was more firmly established in power and in the royal favour than before.

Before Pitt’s audacious act of political brinksmanship could be tested in the House of Lords, George III recovered.

So, what was the cause of his intermittent madness?

The debate goes on today.

Popularised in fiction, King George III’s illness is said to be Porphyria, an inherited blood disorder said to also suffered by Mary, Queen of Scots. One of its unfortunate symptoms was that it turned the sufferer’s urine blue.

However, research released this month suggests that George may have been ‘mad’ after all and that the ‘blue loo’ was as a result of a tonic of gentian violet, when taken in sufficient quantities will have the aforementioned result.

So if not a blood disease, then what?

… new research project based at St George’s, University of London, has concluded that George III did actually suffer from mental illness after all.

Using the evidence of thousands of George III’s own handwritten letters, Dr Peter Garrard and Dr Vassiliki Rentoumi have been analysing his use of language. They have discovered that during his episodes of illness, his sentences were much longer than when he was well.

A sentence containing 400 words and eight verbs was not unusual. George III, when ill, often repeated himself, and at the same time his vocabulary became much more complex, creative and colourful.

These are features that can be seen today in the writing and speech of patients experiencing the manic phase of psychiatric illnesses such as bipolar disorder.

As we know from history, George III managed his symptoms after 1788 and his reign is largely considered highly successful, but Moonstone Obsession asks the question, what if George III’s madness did return and he fixated on helping distant relative Louis XVI of France?