How much actual power did British monarchs have in the 18th and 19th centuries?

[Aurelius]

I know that the last time Royal Assent was withheld was by Queen Anne in 1708, and that nowadays the Queen is a figurehead. But I'm not entirely clear on the extent of royal power, and how it evolved over time, in the intervening time, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. My reading on the American Revolution gives me the impression that King George III had significant sway and influence on British foreign policy, at least, even without using his vestigial power to veto bills of Parliament.

I have 3 questions, in particular:

1. How much actual power and influence did British monarchs in the 18th and 19th centuries have over domestic and foreign policy?

2. In what ways was this power used? Was it entirely informal soft power, or did the monarch have the power to personally appoint and fire PMs and ministers, dictate policy to ministers, intervene to get unfavorable bills off the agenda in Parliament, and the like?

3. How did this situation evolve over time?

Many thanks!

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The first two Hanoverian monarchs, George I and George II were non English speakers with little interest in directly ruling the state they had accidentally found themselves sovereigns of. This was a happy moment of serendipity for parliament who could could muscle into as much power as they could on the king's behalf. In particular, after the hilarious disgrace of much of the establishment (including the king and prince of wales) in the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, the conniving Robert Walpole essentially usurped supreme executive power on behalf of the theoretical powers held by the king (the post of Prime Minister).

However, the king still had the power to appoint and dismiss PM's. George III, the first Hanoverian to care more about Britain than Germany used this power to appoint the infamous Lord North as his client PM, as did George IV both as a regent and true monarch. This power which lasted through a leader as repulsive as George IV, would only die as a result of failed power moves by the least unlikable of the dynasty, William IV: first an attempt to delay the Reform acts and finaly the last attempt of a monarch to dismiss a PM. The nature of the British Constitution means that William's failed attempt to ouster the Melbourne ministry permanently codified that monarch did not have that power. By the Bedchamber Crisis, where the young Queen Victoria's intervention to maintain Lord Melbourne's Whig ministry was widely seen as unconstitutional, we really see the PM as entirely separate from the monarchs wishes (if the queen had her way she would never have let Gladstone be in charge).

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Fwiw if we draw the line even later, to the reigns of Edward VII and George V, you do see a lot of vagueness as to the monarchs role. The nature of the British constitution is that a headstrong (or arrogant) leader could inadvertently change it by their action (or inaction). Edward, for instance, seemed to regard himself as the sort of semi constitutional monarch who could get involved in military and foreign affairs, and often broadly leant on the government in that regards (he hated his nephew the German Kaiser for instance, and was happy to put his voice to alliances against the germans).


As for George V, there was clearly enough debate about his role that some of his advisors recommended taking the Lords side during the constitutional crisis over the People's Budget,  and it's clear that his gravitas made his "advice" often a bit more of a command than you'd expect from a truly constitutional monarch (for example, he basically ordered MacDonald to not resign and form the National Government during 1931). By and large though, the powers would be reduced to those of self preservation: that is the status quo to this day - Liz is very conservative in her interpretation of the rules because she wants to ensure the powers she does have.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

By and large though, the powers would be reduced to those of self preservation: that is the status quo to this day - Liz is very conservative in her interpretation of the rules because she wants to ensure the powers she does have.

Yes - the present functioning of this part of the Constitution is almost entirely the work of terrifying Mid Century Arch-Flunkey Sir Alan Lascelles (a.k.a. 'Tommy', a.k.a. 'Senex') and Brenda herself. There have always been a few worries that Brian might envision a more active role for himself, though the general feeling is that he's less headstrong than he was as a young or middle aged man.

[Antonio the Sixth]

terrifying Mid Century Arch-Flunkey Sir Alan Lascelles

AH YES THAT F**KING GUY

Pardon the normie intrusion but he makes for quite the compelling villain in The Crown, and from what you're saying it sounds like that's historically accurate.

[Blair]

The Queen has also broadly benefitted from the large number of stable Parliaments & the fact that we've only had a handful of post-war parliaments were the third party had more than 50 seats- along with the fact that we now have a 'manual' which outlined how the monarch behaves during this.

terrifying Mid Century Arch-Flunkey Sir Alan Lascelles

AH YES THAT F**KING GUY

Pardon the normie intrusion but he makes for quite the compelling villain in The Crown, and from what you're saying it sounds like that's historically accurate.

It says something that our constitutional guidelines were written in the form of an anonymous letter to the Times. 

[(no subject)]

 George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

I am not going to complain about more attention being given to the Adams and Hamilton, but the problem here is that it tends to shoehorn a slavery versus anti-slavery debate into the American Revolution in such a fashion that really is not appropriate. For one, the first "disturbances" shall we say were not in Virginia or the Carolinas, but in Boston. Second of all, while Henry, Jefferson, and Washington were slave holders, a number of the early leaders like Ben Franklin, John Adams and so on were against the practice. At the same time that this is going on, Britain is continuing to perpetuate one of the most grotesque slave systems in Barbados while its trade network is at this point one of the worst human traffickers in the history of the globe.

Sure it was unfair to paint George III as a tyrant based on the context in which he was operating, but this is hardly a novel understanding to informed people on these matters. I learned this off the History Channel (back when that meant something) along with Samuel Johnson's quote when I was 12. I have often categorized the American Revolution as a bunch of American Whigs, rebelling against a "Whig" British Gov't for not being Whig enough. Which is why opponents of the American revolution were called "Tories" which by this point was little more than a disparaging epithet hurled at fellow Whigs who were not Whig enough, as opposed to being an actual party.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

I am not going to complain about more attention being given to the Adams and Hamilton, but the problem here is that it tends to shoehorn a slavery versus anti-slavery debate into the American Revolution in such a fashion that really is not appropriate. For one, the first "disturbances" shall we say were not in Virginia or the Carolinas, but in Boston. Second of all, while Henry, Jefferson, and Washington were slave holders, a number of the early leaders like Ben Franklin, John Adams and so on were against the practice. At the same time that this is going on, Britain is continuing to perpetuate one of the most grotesque slave systems in Barbados while its trade network is at this point one of the worst human traffickers in the history of the globe.

Sure it was unfair to paint George III as a tyrant based on the context in which he was operating, but this is hardly a novel understanding to informed people on these matters. I learned this off the History Channel (back when that meant something) along with Samuel Johnson's quote when I was 12. I have often categorized the American Revolution as a bunch of American Whigs, rebelling against a "Whig" British Gov't for not being Whig enough. Which is why opponents of the American revolution were called "Tories" which by this point was little more than a disparaging epithet hurled at fellow Whigs who were not Whig enough, as opposed to being an actual party.

And of course, Hamilton's anti-slavery views have been greatly exaggerated, much as claims of Jefferson's supposed abolitionism were thirty or so years ago. Ironically, one outcome of the very rosy portrait Miranda (Chernow) paints of Hamilton's position on slavery has evinced a rash of new scholarship on the subject of his personal involvement in slavery and the slave trade, so that we can now state definitively he was in fact a slaveowner. There is no reason we should regard Hamilton's protestations of his dislike for slavery any more seriously than Jefferson's, except that Jefferson has been under the spotlight for much longer and thus people are more familiar with his hypocrisies and the flawed arguments used to defend them. I expect that as time goes by, the same will be true of Hamilton; maybe then we can finally start to have a serious conversation about slavery and the founders, rather than this silliness about trying to find the one "good" white guy in the eighteenth century who wasn't a white supremacist either in thought or in practice.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

I am not going to complain about more attention being given to the Adams and Hamilton, but the problem here is that it tends to shoehorn a slavery versus anti-slavery debate into the American Revolution in such a fashion that really is not appropriate. For one, the first "disturbances" shall we say were not in Virginia or the Carolinas, but in Boston. Second of all, while Henry, Jefferson, and Washington were slave holders, a number of the early leaders like Ben Franklin, John Adams and so on were against the practice. At the same time that this is going on, Britain is continuing to perpetuate one of the most grotesque slave systems in Barbados while its trade network is at this point one of the worst human traffickers in the history of the globe.

Sure it was unfair to paint George III as a tyrant based on the context in which he was operating, but this is hardly a novel understanding to informed people on these matters. I learned this off the History Channel (back when that meant something) along with Samuel Johnson's quote when I was 12. I have often categorized the American Revolution as a bunch of American Whigs, rebelling against a "Whig" British Gov't for not being Whig enough. Which is why opponents of the American revolution were called "Tories" which by this point was little more than a disparaging epithet hurled at fellow Whigs who were not Whig enough, as opposed to being an actual party.

And of course, Hamilton's anti-slavery views have been greatly exaggerated, much as claims of Jefferson's supposed abolitionism were thirty or so years ago. Ironically, one outcome of the very rosy portrait Miranda (Chernow) paints of Hamilton's position on slavery has evinced a rash of new scholarship on the subject of his personal involvement in slavery and the slave trade, so that we can now state definitively he was in fact a slaveowner. There is no reason we should regard Hamilton's protestations of his dislike for slavery any more seriously than Jefferson's, except that Jefferson has been under the spotlight for much longer and thus people are more familiar with his hypocrisies and the flawed arguments used to defend them. I expect that as time goes by, the same will be true of Hamilton; maybe then we can finally start to have a serious conversation about slavery and the founders, rather than this silliness about trying to find the one "good" white guy in the eighteenth century who wasn't a white supremacist either in thought or in practice.

People need to understand that no historical figure is going to match modern sensibilities completely. Its kind of weird because you reach a point where the far left and the Lost cause types are saying the exact same thing about the founders, but for different reasons, which I have referred to as a two front war to destroy the founding.

[All Along The Watchtower]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

I am not going to complain about more attention being given to the Adams and Hamilton, but the problem here is that it tends to shoehorn a slavery versus anti-slavery debate into the American Revolution in such a fashion that really is not appropriate. For one, the first "disturbances" shall we say were not in Virginia or the Carolinas, but in Boston. Second of all, while Henry, Jefferson, and Washington were slave holders, a number of the early leaders like Ben Franklin, John Adams and so on were against the practice. At the same time that this is going on, Britain is continuing to perpetuate one of the most grotesque slave systems in Barbados while its trade network is at this point one of the worst human traffickers in the history of the globe.

Sure it was unfair to paint George III as a tyrant based on the context in which he was operating, but this is hardly a novel understanding to informed people on these matters. I learned this off the History Channel (back when that meant something) along with Samuel Johnson's quote when I was 12. I have often categorized the American Revolution as a bunch of American Whigs, rebelling against a "Whig" British Gov't for not being Whig enough. Which is why opponents of the American revolution were called "Tories" which by this point was little more than a disparaging epithet hurled at fellow Whigs who were not Whig enough, as opposed to being an actual party.

And of course, Hamilton's anti-slavery views have been greatly exaggerated, much as claims of Jefferson's supposed abolitionism were thirty or so years ago. Ironically, one outcome of the very rosy portrait Miranda (Chernow) paints of Hamilton's position on slavery has evinced a rash of new scholarship on the subject of his personal involvement in slavery and the slave trade, so that we can now state definitively he was in fact a slaveowner. There is no reason we should regard Hamilton's protestations of his dislike for slavery any more seriously than Jefferson's, except that Jefferson has been under the spotlight for much longer and thus people are more familiar with his hypocrisies and the flawed arguments used to defend them. I expect that as time goes by, the same will be true of Hamilton; maybe then we can finally start to have a serious conversation about slavery and the founders, rather than this silliness about trying to find the one "good" white guy in the eighteenth century who wasn't a white supremacist either in thought or in practice.

The problem is that plenty of people in the late 18th century were morally opposed to, and indeed revolted by slavery while simultaneously being resigned to its existence, or at best, hopeful that it would die off naturally (which wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded prior to westward expansion, the invention of the cotton gin, and so on). And of course, many of these same people in one way or another profited off of unfree labor. Indeed, the Three-Fifths Compromise is itself indicative of this passively uneasy attitude; slavery is treated as a matter of fact without any value judgment one way or another.

It’s no coincidence that views on slavery start to polarize with the abolition of the slave trade, westward expansion, and the various territorial compromises regarding slavery’s expansion into new territories and states. Not to mention the emerging divides between regional sections of the country, which simply didn’t exist to that extent during the Revolutionary years.

In the 1770s and 1780s, the Founders could all afford to take a Moderate Hero stance on slavery, because it simply wasn’t a pressing issue at that time.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

Andrew Roberts's work fits very neatly into a growing movement to dethrone Jefferson and the other slave-owning heroes of the American Revolution such as George Washington and James Madison, as well as later presidents such as Andrew Jackson and Civil War figures such as Robert E Lee, from the position of almost religious devotion they have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Recent decades have seen increasing attention given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death"). Both George III and contemporaries such as Samuel Johnson drew attention to this ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Johnson)

It's no coincidence that as the reputations of the Virginia slave-owners have declined, popular culture has seen the reputations of early opponents of slavery elevated: John Adams in the 2008 TV series based on his life, his son John Quincy Adams in the 1997 film Armistad, and Alexander Hamilton in the 2015 musical. (John and Quincy Adams were the only two of the first twelve Presidents who never owned slaves. Hamilton, Treasury Secretary under Washington, was born in the British West Indies and always detested slavery.) Andrew Roberts has contributed greatly to this historical reassessment by debunking most of Jefferson's case against George III.

I am not going to complain about more attention being given to the Adams and Hamilton, but the problem here is that it tends to shoehorn a slavery versus anti-slavery debate into the American Revolution in such a fashion that really is not appropriate. For one, the first "disturbances" shall we say were not in Virginia or the Carolinas, but in Boston. Second of all, while Henry, Jefferson, and Washington were slave holders, a number of the early leaders like Ben Franklin, John Adams and so on were against the practice. At the same time that this is going on, Britain is continuing to perpetuate one of the most grotesque slave systems in Barbados while its trade network is at this point one of the worst human traffickers in the history of the globe.

Sure it was unfair to paint George III as a tyrant based on the context in which he was operating, but this is hardly a novel understanding to informed people on these matters. I learned this off the History Channel (back when that meant something) along with Samuel Johnson's quote when I was 12. I have often categorized the American Revolution as a bunch of American Whigs, rebelling against a "Whig" British Gov't for not being Whig enough. Which is why opponents of the American revolution were called "Tories" which by this point was little more than a disparaging epithet hurled at fellow Whigs who were not Whig enough, as opposed to being an actual party.

And of course, Hamilton's anti-slavery views have been greatly exaggerated, much as claims of Jefferson's supposed abolitionism were thirty or so years ago. Ironically, one outcome of the very rosy portrait Miranda (Chernow) paints of Hamilton's position on slavery has evinced a rash of new scholarship on the subject of his personal involvement in slavery and the slave trade, so that we can now state definitively he was in fact a slaveowner. There is no reason we should regard Hamilton's protestations of his dislike for slavery any more seriously than Jefferson's, except that Jefferson has been under the spotlight for much longer and thus people are more familiar with his hypocrisies and the flawed arguments used to defend them. I expect that as time goes by, the same will be true of Hamilton; maybe then we can finally start to have a serious conversation about slavery and the founders, rather than this silliness about trying to find the one "good" white guy in the eighteenth century who wasn't a white supremacist either in thought or in practice.

The problem is that plenty of people in the late 18th century were morally opposed to, and indeed revolted by slavery while simultaneously being resigned to its existence, or at best, hopeful that it would die off naturally (which wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded prior to westward expansion, the invention of the cotton gin, and so on). And of course, many of these same people in one way or another profited off of unfree labor. Indeed, the Three-Fifths Compromise is itself indicative of this passively uneasy attitude; slavery is treated as a matter of fact without any value judgment one way or another.

It’s no coincidence that views on slavery start to polarize with the abolition of the slave trade, westward expansion, and the various territorial compromises regarding slavery’s expansion into new territories and states. Not to mention the emerging divides between regional sections of the country, which simply didn’t exist to that extent during the Revolutionary years.

In the 1770s and 1780s, the Founders could all afford to take a Moderate Hero stance on slavery, because it simply wasn’t a pressing issue at that time.

I agree entirely. Not to further derail a thread about the evolution of the British monarchy with a discussion of American history but the development of a distinct and cohesive northern identity & "free labor" value system was absolutely essential to the success of the political antislavery movement in the 1860s. Prior to that, slavery simply wasn't the nationally divisive issue it became after 1830: it was political but not partisan, we might say. It took time for politicians to realize the national significance of slavery's expansion, and in the 1790s—with years or decades to come before statehood for any part of the Northwest Territory became a realistic prospect—there were simply other, more pressing issues before the country in the opinion of the leaders of the government & the white male freeholders who were in all but a few states the only legal voters. An understandable desire to draw out the origins of the conflict over slavery has led popular histories of the founders to exaggerate the centrality of what was (for Jefferson and Hamilton) a side issue of negotiable importance.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

George III was an enlightened, cultured and conscientious monarch, who never once tried to exceed the powers of the Crown as set out in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. On matters related to the American colonies, Roberts asserts (and proves) that George always followed the advice of his prime ministers, first the Earl of Bute and then Lord North. This is what a constitutional monarch is supposed to do, even when the advice is disastrously wrong, as the advice of Bute and North usually was.
George's problem as far as British politics were concerned was that he followed three weak monarchs (Anne, George I and George II), during whose reigns from 1702 to 1760 the grandees of the Whig aristocracy had become accustomed to running the country as they pleased. They were naturally affronted when George reasserted the royal prerogatives that the 1688 settlement undoubtedly gave him. This has been rather misleadingly portrayed by subsequent Whiggish historians as a struggle between royal autocracy and an emerging democracy. But there was nothing autocratic about George, and very little democratic about the Whig aristocracy: they opposed George mainly because he infringed on their privileges.

I agree with you that there was very little democratic about the Whig oligarchy and that George's crushing of it made Britain a much more democratic place, but I would dispute the notion that there was nothing autocratic about the King himself. Certainly, in his (and Parliament's) conduct toward the American colonies one can detect more than a little hint of autocracy, hence why we felt it necessary in the course of human events to declare our independence; in his backdoor maneuverings to topple the Fox-North coalition of 1783; and in his later years his repeated blocking of any sort of parliamentary Catholic Emancipation.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Bumping because this is an interesting thread.

[The Mikado]

Bumping because this is an interesting thread.

Crabcake is right that the real split isn't the Glorious Revolution but the total lack of interest in British politics by the first two Hanoverians. William & Mary and Queen Anne both had a LOT of influence on politics even after 1688, and Crabcake is also right to point to William IV as the last royal to fire a PM.

The thing is that there's not a lot of reason to bump the thread because the overall takeaway of "the royals still retain a great deal of theoretical power that would be abolished if they ever tried to actually use it" is really the biggest element of the story.

[Senator Incitatus]

...given to the hypocrisy of slave-owners like Jefferson ("all men are created equal") and Patrick Henry ("give me liberty of give me death")...

I know this is an extreme aside but Henry's speech had nothing to do with personal liberty; it was about collective national liberty from imperialism—as was almost every use of the word liberty during the Founding. The speech itself was an urge to the formation of a Virginia militia over and against the caution urged by those who thought this might bring death upon their heads. Henry was saying he would rather die than remain under British rule:

Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

Nowhere in the speech does he mention personal freedom or liberty of action. Henry did use the metaphor of slavery in his speech, as did many Founders, of all various views on slavery, but there was nothing internally inconsistent about calling for collective liberty from Britain without personal, individual liberty for slaves. Henry's speech as a libertarian cry for freedom is a misconception pushed by twentieth-century fusionists of the Buckley stripe.

Jefferson was a bit of a hypocrite, though, or rather a vacillating man who put very little thought behind his choice of words.

[(no subject)]

Roberts is the first biographer to make full use of the Georgian Papers (https://georgianpapers.com/) more than 200,000 pages of documents from the Georgian period from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, which the Queen has authorised to be published online, most of them for the first time. The Papers include thousands of letters, both public and personal, too and from George III, and allow a complete reappraisal both of his personality and of his role in the events of his reign.

[All Along The Watchtower]

It's interesting to compare George I and II, both middle-aged Hanoverians when they acceded to the British throne and who as CrabCake mentioned, cared little for British affairs, with George III, who was a very young man when acceded, on account of the untimely death of his beloved father before the death of his despised grandfather George II.

I suspect the differing ages at which they became King was one factor explaining differences among them in interest in matters of state and the assertion of the royal prerogative.