to be given to the privy council. All marriages contracted contrary to the act were to be null, and the parties to incur the penalties of præmunire. This bill was the king's own work, and he made it a personal matter. ‘I expect every nerve to be strained,’ he wrote, ‘to carry the bill with becoming firmness, for it is not a question that immediately relates to administration, but personally to myself;’ adding that he should ‘remember defaulters.’ Nevertheless the bill was violently opposed. Chatham pronounced it ‘new-fangled and impudent,’ and the king heard with anxiety that there was a strong feeling against it in the commons. He asked North for a list of ‘those that went away and those that deserted to the minority; that,’ he added, ‘would be a rule for my conduct in the drawing-room to-morrow’ (Letters to North, i. 97; Chatham Corr. iv. 199, 203; Lecky, Hist. iii. 463; Stanhope, Hist. v. 311; see art. Fox, Charles James). The bill was carried by considerable majorities. He expressed strong dislike to the motion for abolishing compulsory subscription to the articles of religion by clergymen, physicians, and others, observing that ‘presbyterians often resembled Socinians rather than Christians.’ Affairs in the north of Europe directly and indirectly conduced to set Great Britain in opposition to France. During the war between Russia and the Porte a French fleet would have entered the Baltic had not England interfered. George was anxious to prevent a war, and recommended his ministers to ‘speak out’ as to their determination not to allow France to take part against Russia. The policy he recommended was successful; France was forced to leave the Turk to his fate, and Russia obtained substantial gains by the treaty of Kainardji. He was hostile to Lord Clive [q. v.], who was supported generally by the opposition, and on 22 May 1773 expressed his amazement ‘that private interest could make so many individuals … approve of Lord Clive's rapine’ (Letters to North, p. 135).
On 16 Dec. 1773 the irritation of the American colonists at the retention of the tea duty broke out in a riot at Boston. George shared the opinion of most of his people that the colonists might safely be despised, and that if firmness was used they would soon submit. Accordingly in 1774 he felt much satisfaction at the Boston Port Bill, and the bill for regulating the government of Massachusetts Bay. He had no wish to see fresh taxes laid on the colonists, but considered it necessary to maintain the duty in order to keep up the right of taxation. The meeting of congress in September convinced him that the colonists must ‘either triumph or submit,’ and he declared in November that blows must decide whether they were to be his subjects or independent (ib. pp. 202, 215). Meanwhile in the spring he was annoyed at the awkward predicament in which North was placed in the debate on the matter of the printer Woodfall, and insisted on the dismissal of Fox for his conduct in the affair. Although he was mortified at the return of Wilkes for Middlesex, the general result of the elections to the new parliament delighted him. In spite of the eloquence of the opposition, the ministers had a majority of 190 to 200 in the commons in favour of their American policy. War actually broke out on 19 April 1775, and in August the king as elector of Hanover arranged for the employment of Hanoverian troops to garrison Gibraltar and Minorca. He received no subsidy for lending these troops, but asked to be reimbursed for expenses and levy-money. He also busied himself about the hire of other German forces and recruiting matters at home. A proposal for the hire of Russian troops made in a letter written with his own hand called forth a rebuff from the empress Catherine which greatly annoyed him. (For the part taken by George in the negotiations for the hire of foreign troops see a chapter by E. J. Lowell in ‘History of America,’ ed. Winsor, vii. 16–23, 74–7.) He was indignant at the attacks which Chatham made in the course of the session on the policy of the ministers with respect to the colonists. Chatham was, he said, the ‘trumpet of sedition;’ his political conduct was ‘abandoned.’ For himself, he was ‘fighting the battle of the legislature’ (Letters to North, p. 267); and not only the legislature but the nation at large upheld his determination. At the same time he was not so embittered against the colonists as to refuse proposals of accommodation, for his influence was certainly exercised in February 1775 on behalf of North's Conciliation Bill. He did not believe that the war would be of long duration, and rejected Howe's advice that it should be carried on by sea only. As the war continued, his feelings became more bitter, and though the opposition in parliament and outside it gathered strength, the nation widely shared in them. The city of London disapproved of the ministerial policy; the royal proclamation for the suppression of rebellion was received with hisses on the Exchange, and the city tried to provoke a quarrel with the king by refusing to present an address, except to him on the throne. ‘I am ever ready,’ the king said, ‘to receive addresses and petitions, but I am the judge where.’ He was pleased at the capture of New York in September 1776, and believed
