Messages 2008
George III’s Viewpoint on the American Revolution.
September 20th, 2008
Santa Cruz, California
Received by FAB.
I am here, George III.
I have been wanting to write to you for quite some time, but your guides told me the time was not right. Now, tonight, I can finally fulfill my desire to send to the earth a message.
I have been perceived by your countrymen and women, stretching back to the eighteenth century, as the tyrant who caused, by my cruelty and oppression, your war for independence. I had my own point of view on it, and I retain an independent attitude.
I did suffer for many things I did. I did bring hardship and suffering to the colonists. Their passionate and violent reaction surprised me and many other Englishmen. From our perspective, we felt it was only fair for the colonists to contribute their share of the cost of the war with the French and the Natives of the 1750s and 1760s. But events went out of control as I asserted what I thought was my privilege as the reigning monarch.
For me, it was my God-given prerogative as the English sovereign to impose order, and if the colonists reacted against that, so much the worse for them. I never considered their complaints because that would have questioned my authority, which I would not do. I was the sovereign and they were my subjects. And as for Parliament, it also had rights over the colonists, as we felt.
But from my greater vantage point over here, it is clear to me now how I literally pushed them to revolt. This is not how I saw it at the time. They were rebellious against authority, which to me was treason. And so I acted, alienating them even more, until the bridge was crossed and war came.
Have I had regrets about my role in all this? Most certainly yes. But there was more to me than oppression. I was also devout and felt a strong bond with God. In fact, I felt, as a reigning monarch, that God had given me authority, and thus I was simply exercising this authority as an expression of God’s will. Yes, that is how I saw it.
I am told by your guides that the reason why my writing to you was delayed was because of events in your country. It was felt that because of the political and economic realities the country is now facing, this is the perfect time for your compatriots to reconsider the point of view of the man who more than any other precipitated this revolution.
I know that all that is past, and it is important to live in the present. But it is equally important to resee the past in order to maximize life’s advantages in the present.
I have benefited greatly from this world of spirits. I had to renounce my idea of having divine authority as king. I learned that this was an error. But because I had a strong relationship with God on earth and did my best to serve Him, I didn’t fare too poorly, as the spirits of monarchs go. In fact, when I saw the helpless condition of so many monarchs, I was very grateful I was spared additional suffering.
I avoided the excesses of corruption and kept my relationship with God as pure as I could, despite the unreasonable pull of circumstances that I was subjected to. But I did my best, and it would be good for your compatriots to see me in this different way.
And, in addition to all the unreasonable pressures, I suffered from mental illness. Oh, this was a scourge not to be in my right mind! Diseases of the mind were very imperfectly understood in those times. So I was thrilled when these troubles left me forever when I became a spirit.
As my soul left my body, I could feel a great shift in my mind. It instantly acquired precision and poise, which was so different from my afflictions. Oh, it was such a wonderful thing! I was so moved by gratitude that my mind had been restored to me that I maintained a reverential silence because I was overcome with the holiest emotions of gratitude and sanctity.
As some of humanity progresses rapidly, I feel it would be good for your compatriots to have compassion for what I went through. In this way, an enemy can be a friend, and the soul of your country can continue to grow.
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 - 29 January 1820 [N.S.]) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until 1 January 1801, and thereafter of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, formed by the union of these two countries, until his death. He was concurrently Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, and thus prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire, and then King of Hanover from 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, and the first of Hanover to be born in Britain and speak English as his first language.
George III’s long reign was marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdom, much of the rest of Europe, and places further afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years’ War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American Revolutionary War, which led to the establishment of the United States. A series of wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, over a twenty-year period, finally concluded in the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
In the latter half of his life, George III suffered from recurrent and, eventually, permanent mental illness. This baffled medical science at the time, although it is now generally thought that he suffered from the blood disease porphyria. Porphyria can be triggered by the poison arsenic, and recent studies have shown high levels of arsenic in locks of King George’s hair. After a final relapse in 1810, his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales ruled as Prince Regent. On George III’s death, the Prince of Wales succeeded his father as George IV. Historical analysis of George III’s life has gone through a “kaleidoscope of changing views” which have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them. (Source: Wikipedia)