George III and Kingship at Court in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

Thesis

This thesis explores the nature of kingship in late eighteenth-century Britain and its relationship to the court as a social body combining institutional and interpersonal relationships centered on the monarch. The court under George III encompassed a select group of loyal attendants and office-holders who worked to uphold the conservative moral and political values that accompanied the king’s status, or dignity, as a sovereign ruler in Britain as well as in Europe. Scholarship of this period, however, has placed a greater emphasis on the expanding public sphere, where increased commercial and political activity outgrew the boundaries of early modern courts throughout Europe. This, alongside the political upheaval in Britain in the 1780s and George’s illness at the end of the decade, have contributed to notions of courtly decline. A better understanding of late Georgian monarchy involves a re-evaluation of the court’s structure and culture, as well as the style of kingship that it prioritized. The approach of this thesis challenges the notion of decline in this period and rejects the king’s resulting associations with bourgeois domestic comfort. The court circle that he cultivated instead supported royal ritual and formality beyond the drawing rooms at St. James’s Palace. The role of George’s consort, Queen Charlotte, also significantly impacted his expression of kingship following the Regency Crisis. The aristocratic families employed within the queen’s household helped to dictate court sociability, participating in the king’s wider moral program and promoting the chivalric values that he cultivated at Windsor Castle. These courtiers also facilitated the king’s connections to a wider European princehood. George III was thus enabled to express a particular style of kingship at a transformative time in his reign, marked not by decline, but by a persistent exercise of conservative, monarchical practice and a growing dependence on a select court circle.

Authors: Westcott, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-bed6nb9gq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: courtiers; eighteenth century; early modern; monarchy; Hanoverian; Queen Charlotte; princehood; kingship; royal household; George III; court
• Subjects: Great Britain--History--George III, 1760-1820; Court and courtiers