Episode 3 The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain

In 1743, King George II became the last British king ever

to lead his troops in person on the battlefield.

"Now, boys," he said, "fire and be brave and the French will soon run!"

BANG

The battle was Dettingen, here in Germany,

and the enemy was Britain's old adversary, France.

George had reached the ripe old age of 59.

Some of the British thought the ageing king's military

enthusiasm had got the better of him.

But when they tried to shuffle the king off the battlefield

for his own safety, he said,

"Don't tell me of danger. I'll be even with them."

BANG

Now, George II was undeniably brave,

but was he really acting in the best interests of Britain?

German George II was a warrior king.

He was using the power of Britain to protect his other realm,

his native Hanover.

But the British were more interested in ruling the waves

than fighting continental wars.

For this series, I've been given access to the Royal Collection

as pieces are brought together for an exhibition about the first

Georgian kings at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace.

This was a new dynasty who found themselves fighting the French,

the Jacobites and each other, all at the same time.

It's remarkable that these Hanoverian kings

didn't weaken the monarchy, they strengthened it.

They helped transform Britain into a global superpower.

What was George II doing on this foreign battlefield?

This is exactly where his artillery was positioned.

Well, this is part of the War of the Austrian Succession.

It was a gallant cause.

It was the defence of the rights of Maria Theresa of Austria

to inherit her father's throne, even though she was a woman.

But George had ulterior motives.

He wanted to contain the French threat

and protect the interests of Hanover's near neighbour, Austria.

Although he was nearly 60,

George II was determined to lead from the front.

A cannonball went whizzing within half a yard of his head

and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, got shot in the leg.

But despite these close brushes with death, the battle was a success.

You'd think that George II would be riding high after thrashing

the French, but some of his British subjects weren't happy.

On the battlefield of Dettingen,

George had worn the yellow sash of Hanover.

All the king's enemies at home seized upon the fact that he

charged into battle wearing Hanoverian colours, not British.

Some people went so far as to say that George was defending Hanover

with the blood of proud Englishmen.

It became such a PR problem that when this portrait was painted,

George was portrayed wearing a sash

that was tactfully and Britishly blue.

Unsurprisingly, George's opponents

sought to capitalise on this controversy.

On the one side were the king's own supporters,

who wanted to defend the white horse of Hanover.

This lot wanted a strong British Army

to get involved in continental wars to protect Hanover's interests.

On the other hand,

we have the patriots, represented by the British lion. Raar!

This lot thought that Hanover was a chink in Britain's defences.

"Forget Hanover," they said,

"Britain is an island nation defended by the sea."

The patriots were a charismatic group of politicians and poets.

They counted both Whigs and Tories among their number.

They were the original Euro-sceptics.

The patriots believed Britain should go it alone.

Ignore continental disputes, build a strong navy

and gain more colonies in America and around the world.

This was the way, they argued,

for Britain to secure international dominance.

Now, this lot needed a leader.

And they settled upon the king's eldest son, Prince Frederick,

who, by this point,

had become something of a professional activist.

George II had always considered his eldest son Frederick

to be the black sheep of the family.

As people said, it ran in the blood of these Georgian monarchs

to hate their eldest son.

George II and Frederick had always had their petty feuds

and squabbles, but now the king was really worried.

Frederick was gaining political momentum.

In 1740, Frederick was the inspiration for a new song

that was to be the theme tune for these rebellious patriots.

Ready?

It was so scandalous that it had to be performed privately.

So you might be surprised to learn that you know it already.

MUSIC: Rule, Britannia!

Today, people think Rule, Britannia!

on the Last Night of the Proms

is a cheery celebration of Britishness.

But this song was in fact an open revolt against King George II,

as I suggested to the historian Dr Oliver Cox.

I mean, when it's first performed, it's a royal revolt.

It's a song for a prince against his father

and against his father's Prime Minister.

Rule, Britannia! as we sing it now

is, "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves."

It's a statement of present fact.

When it's first performed in 1740, it's, "Rule the waves."

It's a command.

It's an expectation that if we follow the patriots' policies,

Britain will rule the waves.

The song goes on and on and on about this concept of liberty.

What does that mean in the 18th century?

One of the problems with the 1730s, as far as the patriots are concerned

is the liberty to choose their own representatives in Parliament,

the liberty to be protected from external invaders,

the liberty to trade as they want to, is threatened and endangered.

And what the patriots thought needed to happen

was an emphasis on English liberty, the navy and trade.

You've got these three important tenets

that really bind everything they say together.

Frederick, obviously, is born and grows up in Hanover.

He's the family's main representative there

for the first part of his life.

But then later on, he becomes awfully English, doesn't he?

Yeah. He sort of rebrands himself.

And whether it's a clever piece of opportunistic politicking

in the sense that by acting far more English,

he's able to bring in a sort of disparate group

of the disaffected politicians and poets

who may one day be able to help him

conceive of a coherent opposition policy to his father.

Does he do all this just to annoy his dad?

I think a lot of the difficulties and the issues

that we see throughout the 1730s and 1740s

is Frederick, you know,

sticking his middle finger up at his dad.

Frederick was the king in waiting.

And he was, frankly, getting impatient for power.

He now had his own rival court

and he began to tussle with his father, George II,

over foreign policy and how best to tackle the French threat.

Patriot William Pitt was just one politician

who fought for Frederick's manifesto in Parliament.

He felt that the Electorate of Hanover was Britain's weak link.

Pitt was a notoriously good orator.

This is one wonderful speech that he made in the Houses of Parliament,

complaining that the Hanoverian tail was wagging the British dog.

"Britain," he said, "this great, this powerful,

"this formidable country,

"is treated merely as the province of a despicable electorate."

Clearly, this wasn't going to win him any favours with George II.

And throughout the 1740s, Pitt was a lone voice in the wilderness,

like Churchill before World War II.

He was calling for more British self-confidence

and aggression towards France,

the seizing of French colonies in America.

But nobody was listening.

Pitt was right.

The French were always looking for ways to destabilise Britain.

And so, they conspired with Jacobite plotters.

George II's exiled rival, the Pretender, James Stuart,

had a good blood claim to the British crown.

But he had been excluded for his Catholicism.

This would-be King James III and his Jacobite supporters

had been twiddling their thumbs in exile in Rome.

But the French now threw them a lifeline -

military backing to attempt a coup in Britain.

On 23rd July 1745,

James III's son, Charles Edward Stuart,

landed on the east coast of Scotland and sounded the rallying cry.

Charles, who was basically an Italian,

was here to challenge George, a German, to the British throne.

And here at the Palace of Holyroodhouse

is the man of the hour.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart, AKA the Young Pretender.

Charles Stuart had been brought up in Rome.

And he'd always been told that the British throne was rightfully his,

if only he could go out and get it.

This portrait is like a recruiting poster for the prince's supporters.

He's saying here, "Your prince needs you!"

And what a dashing and handsome young prince he is.

He's looking very martial in his armour.

He's looking very official

and respectable in his blue sash of the Order of the Garter.

But on top of that, he's wearing the green ribbon

with the Cross of St Andrews of the Order of the Thistle.

The Scottish Order.

And this is designed to appeal

to his richest source of potential support, the Scots.

The Stuarts had been Scottish kings

long before they'd inherited the English throne in the 17th century.

And many Scots, particularly in the Highlands,

rallied to Charles Stuart's cause.

George II's popularity was at a low point.

His decision to go on fighting the War of the Austrian Succession

was seen as a pointless drain on British resources.

It was mainly the old Protestant dislike

and mistrust of Catholicism

that was keeping King George II on the throne

and the exiled Stuarts off it.

Edinburgh should have been a stronghold for George II,

but with a sword in one hand and a cross in the other,

the Young Pretender simply strolled with his forces

into the Scottish capital and took control.

He got a riotous reception,

particularly from two sections of the crowd.

Firstly, the so-called common people and secondly, the ladies.

All the women got out their handkerchiefs and threw them

into the street in front of him.

It was on this occasion that a new nickname was heard for Charles Stuart.

People were shouting out for "Bonnie Prince Charlie".

By now, Charles Stuart had got together an army

of between 11,000 and 14,000 troops.

His advisors encouraged him to seize the hour...

..to march on London to take the big prize.

The British throne.

Charles Stuart set up government

here at the Palace of Holyroodhouse for five weeks.

While he was here, he issued the declaration of King James,

on behalf of his exiled father.

This declaration appealed very cleverly

to the self-interest of the British.

It said that their German kings had been involving them

in irrelevant foreign wars,

wasting their resources, disrupting trade

and, anyway, nobody wants to be ruled by a foreigner.

You can see how this touched a nerve

amongst Prince Frederick's group of patriots.

Charles Stuart was being rather clever here.

He knew that running down Hanover would appeal to the British public.

Indeed, Sir Robert Walpole, when he was Prime Minister,

had remarked that they would have been better off

making Charles Stuart Elector of Hanover,

because the public will never fetch another king from there.

During the weeks of Charles Stuart's advance south into England,

tensions mounted in the Georgian court.

George II, bursting for a fight as usual,

was ready to get on his horse and lead the charge.

Instead, though, his younger son, the rotund Duke of Cumberland,

was hurriedly brought back from the War of the Austrian Succession

and sent north to face the Jacobite threat.

There was no love lost between the sons of George II.

That's Frederick, the Prince of Wales,

and his younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland.

They really were chalk and cheese.

Frederick was thin and liked music,

whereas Cumberland was as fat as a Cumberland sausage

and he was a career soldier.

Frederick was right to worry about the threat

his younger brother represented.

George II had even talked about a plan

where Frederick would be shuffled out of the line of succession

and given Hanover as a consolation prize,

and the crown of Great Britain would be placed firmly

on the head of the king's favourite son, Cumberland, instead.

Cumberland now marched north

for a showdown with the Jacobite army at Carlisle Castle.

Meanwhile, his brother Frederick

had Carlisle Castle recreated in spun sugar

for a rather quirky dinner party rebellion.

The Duke of Cumberland had liberated

the city of Carlisle from the Jacobites.

But Frederick wasn't very impressed by this.

He decided to make a mockery out of it.

One day for dessert,

he ordered a model of the Citadel of Carlisle to be made out of sugar.

And after dinner, he bombarded it with sugarplums.

Now, this must have been quite hilarious for Frederick's guests

and it may seem a little bit trivial.

But actually, members of the royal family

couldn't come right out and openly criticise each other.

They had to express their opinions obliquely.

And that's why their politics could be expressed

through things like their puddings.

Frederick was also making a bigger, humanitarian point.

He was a gentler character than his brother

and abhorred Cumberland's brutal approach to warfare.

As Charles Stuart and the Jacobites retreated back north into Scotland,

the Duke of Cumberland was beginning to pursue them with real ferocity.

GUNFIRE

FAINT SHOUTS

CHORAL SINGING

The struggle for the British throne came to a head here at Culloden...

..a battlefield that would become a byword for cruelty and bloodshed.

This was the last battle ever to be fought on British soil.

It was to be decided by two men in their 20s.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was 25

and Cumberland's 25th birthday

was the day before the battle.

Kate Heard, Royal Collection Trust's

Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings,

believes this watercolour is the closest we have

to a visual first-hand account of Culloden.

This picture takes us to a ringside seat at the battle, doesn't it?

How was the artist able to do that?

We know that the artist was at the battle. He was working for

the Duke of Cumberland as a draughtsman and surveyor.

So we know he was an eyewitness to the battle.

It looks like this side are winning because they're all coming forwards.

-But that's not actually what's happening, is it?

-No.

You're absolutely right in that they are appearing to advance.

They are advancing. It's the Jacobite troops on the right.

They are doing this Highland charge,

which is their characteristic means of fighting.

And it had been very successful for them.

They'd won the Battle of Prestonpans just earlier in the same manner.

But what they are facing

is devastating fire from the government troops.

They've got better guns.

They've got better guns and they've loaded them with canister shot,

which scatters shot across the field.

There's the Duke of Cumberland, sitting there watching.

Was he a good commander, do you think?

He had a lot to prove, at this point.

He'd recently suffered a really humiliating defeat

against the French on the Continent at the Battle of Fontenoy

and he'd come to deal with a Jacobite threat.

We know he sent spies to the Jacobite camp the night before,

so he was forewarned of what was about to happen.

And he also had the advantage, in that the Jacobites

had attempted a night raid which had failed,

so the soldiers were tired, in a way that his soldiers weren't.

It's very distressing,

because we've got all of these poor Highlanders running forwards,

with what looks like a pitchfork in his hand

and these guys are just shooting cannons at them.

It was clearly a horrific battle. A great sort of toll.

But there was another factor in the fall of the Jacobites.

They'd been abandoned by their French allies.

Things were now going well for the French on the Continent.

They no longer needed to employ diversionary tactics in Scotland.

I met Dr Tony Pollard, a battlefield historian,

who believes that Bonnie Prince Charlie

didn't have any choice but to turn and face Cumberland's forces.

Tony, why did Bonnie Prince Charlie have to stand and fight here?

Or why did he feel that he had to?

There are a number of reasons, really.

For the Jacobites, it's a last roll of the dice.

And the option is either to fight here,

or disappear into the mountains and basically fight a guerrilla war.

Wouldn't they have been really good at that?

I'm sure they would have been, given the Highland backbone to the army,

but the thing is that Charles is a prince,

and princes do not fight guerrilla wars.

-It's a matter of masculine pride.

-There's very much a matter of pride.

So, Bonnie Prince Charlie has his last great gamble. It fails.

Just how bad was the defeat?

For him personally, it seems to have been catastrophic.

He can't deal with the fact that this was it.

But there are still men out there desperate to continue the fight.

But he doesn't want to.

And he disappears off into the heather, famously.

And so, the Jacobite cause bleeds to death on Culloden Moor.

What sort of reprisals did Cumberland start to take?

This is where things get very nasty.

Almost as soon as the gun smoke has cleared,

the reprisals on the field begin,

and wounded Jacobites are executed,

men are taken away and imprisoned temporarily, then executed.

Civilians are kept away from the battlefield.

So, it beggars belief what might have gone on here.

Now, some people have used the words "ethnic cleansing"

to talk about these atrocities.

-Do you think that's fair?

-Very much so.

There is a concerted campaign, particularly in the Highlands,

basically, to wreak havoc and to take revenge.

And there are some terrible stories.

And Cumberland himself, at one point, wanted to exile

most of the population of the Highlands to the Americas,

so they couldn't cause more trouble.

So, it's an understandable response to these events.

Mass killings and mass graves.

Unspeakable atrocities were witnessed at Culloden.

And in Scotland, the duke is still known as "Butcher" Cumberland.

Back in London though, he was feted as the man who'd saved Britain.

Handel's Oratorio, Judas Maccabaeus,

including the words, "See the conquering hero comes,"

was composed in his honour and rang out at St Paul's Cathedral.

King George II had finally vanquished the Stuart threat.

A visitor to his crowded court reported,

"I never saw anyone in such glee as the king."

You could also buy a little bit of the Hanoverian victory

to take home with you,

in the form of these commemorative medals in gold or silver,

celebrating the Duke of Cumberland.

And this is such a divisive image, isn't it?

To the Hanoverian supporters in London, they would have seen here

a conquering hero, a fine figure of a man.

But if you show this image of the duke with his jowls

to a Scottish person, even today, they are likely to spit on it.

And the Hanoverians weren't done with the Highlanders yet.

George II got Parliament to pass the Dress Act

that made it illegal to wear tartan and banned the bagpipes.

Frederick disagreed with this heavy-handed treatment,

but again, he displayed his rebellion in quite a cunning way.

He commissioned a painting of his son,

the future George III, containing a coded message.

People at the time thought there was something

very strange about this picture.

It was painted only months after the Battle of Culloden and yet,

the little boy is wearing tartan.

This could have been family politics.

This is Frederick and his children

having a go at Frederick's brother, the Duke of Cumberland,

the victor of Culloden.

Maybe Frederick is saying,

"I have some sympathy for the vanquished Jacobites."

And I'd like to think this is Frederick trying to assimilate

the style of the Scots back into Great Britain.

It would eventually work very well.

Tartan would become a symbol of romanticism, rather than rebellion.

Myth and romance swirl around our image of the brave Scots,

with their pitchforks being cut down by a hi-tech army.

In reality, Scotland was just as sophisticated a society as England.

The Jacobites may have been in love with the past,

wanting to turn back time to the days when kings had divine right.

But Scotland also boasted more progressive people,

such as a group of new thinkers

who were much more interested in shaping the future.

The men of the Scottish Enlightenment.

From poetry to pathology, Enlightenment thinking

flowed out into all sorts of channels, including architecture.

Those behind it thought that their future lay within the Union.

So, a competition to create a whole new quarter of Edinburgh

was won by a design that featured a Union flag.

George Street links the grand thoroughfares

of Hanover Street and Frederick Street.

But just why did the Scottish capital teem with innovation?

The answer was education

and education and education.

By 1750, the Scots were the most literate nation in Europe.

75% of them knew how to read.

And they also had five universities, as opposed to just two in England.

At the Scottish universities, the fees were relatively low

and the social mix was relatively broad.

Scottish people liked to joke

that there were the same number of universities in the whole of England

as there were in just the city of Aberdeen.

There was also a practical bent to education in Scotland.

Poor but ambitious Scots,

armed with useful skills found plenty of opportunity abroad

in Britain's trade networks and new colonies.

The Scots had failed to beat the English,

so now it seemed like time to join them and make a profit.

Professor Tom Devine believes

that while the English ruled Britain's colonies,

the Scots actually ran them.

What were the practical effects of the Scottish Enlightenment,

when these well-educated Scottish people were going abroad

to sort of practise it in other countries?

The impact is significant across the Atlantic

in the mid to late 18th-century period,

because these new colonies, North American colonies,

what became the USA, is looking for ideas.

For example, it's looking for a kind of intellectual toolkit

from European thinking, in order to build up

its institutions virtually from scratch.

And to a significant degree, it gets them from Scotia.

The most remarkable example was what was called

the College of New Jersey, better known now as Princeton.

Princeton was the seminary

for the first generation of statesmen in the USA.

And Princeton's president was John Witherspoon,

a Scot, a Scottish cleric of the Enlightenment period.

Do you think it's fair to say the Scottish Enlightenment

was a sort of engine driving the expansion of the British Empire?

Well, it certainly was in terms of thinking

and it certainly was in terms of the tremendous regard

that during the Enlightenment,

Scotland developed almost a reverence for learning.

And that was very important,

because not all immigrants

into the empire in this period were literate.

Scots had this particular advantage of literacy and numeracy.

I mean, don't forget, you get Scottish stereotypes aplenty.

The Scottish doctor, the Scottish physician,

the Scottish engineer. "Beam me up, Scotty."

So you've got these intelligent, well-educated, rational,

-commercially successful Scots.

-And greedy.

But they're not making their own society fairer,

they're going off across the world to get rich elsewhere.

But it's important to recognise that among this range of influences,

if you like, the intellectual engine of Enlightenment,

I would argue the primary engine is materialistic.

The reason why Scottish doctors

went in their large numbers to the Caribbean

was not simply to study disease

or to provide support or healing,

it was to make lots and lots of filthy lucre.

SHE CHUCKLES

One settlement that provided these kinds of opportunities

was the new American colony of Georgia,

named after King George II.

In exchange for bringing education to the Native American population,

Britain gained fertile territory

for growing new empire products, like tobacco.

In 1734, the kings of this New World

came to pay their respects to the king of the old.

A party of chiefs from the Cherokee nation came here

to this room in Kensington Palace,

to pay their respects to the King of Britain.

Their leader was called Tomochichi.

He came with his war captains

and their faces were painted in red and black.

The British thought it looked like they were wearing masks.

As part of the welcome ceremony,

Tomochichi was introduced to the ladies of the British court.

And he was asked to judge which of them

he thought was the most beautiful.

Tomochichi gave what I think is a very diplomatic answer.

He said, "I can't possibly tell,

"because all you white folk look the same to me."

The race was on to colonise the New World.

And, again, George II's Scottish subjects were helping to win it.

Protecting Georgia's lucrative frontier lands

against the Spanish in Florida and the French in the Alabama Basin

were Scottish Highlanders, who'd emigrated as soldier-settlers.

One of the first towns they founded was New Inverness,

named after the home they'd left behind.

Transporting the products of the empire safely back to Britain

was not without risk.

Vessels faced the hazards of piracy and shipwreck.

Prince Frederick, still banging his patriot drum,

believed a strong navy to protect the trade routes was vital,

and he said so on a visit to Bristol.

When Frederick was entertained here at the Merchants' Hall,

it was very lavishly, with 100 dishes on the table.

And he was mobbed by the wives of 500 merchants.

He made a speech that was all about the importance of the Navy,

to protect the ships of all of these people, carrying their cotton

and their sugar. And this went down very well, as you might expect.

He finished with a few rousing words on

"the importance of the advancement of trade,

"which has a valuable effect

"on the liberty and happiness of our nation."

Cheers!

All sorts of new empire goods were now available in Britain,

and keen consumers were to be found

in the growing middling rank of society.

Crucially, the Georgians now had a reliable system of credit.

You could order goods now and pay for them later.

People could now buy not only what they needed,

but what they wanted.

The British went mad for the so-called Empire products -

tea from China and textiles from India.

And they also loved the 18th-century phenomenon

known as the toy shop. We're not talking here about toys for kids,

but for adults, little knick-knacks and table decorations,

that sort of thing.

Dr Johnson defined a toy as

"something for show rather than use,

"a petty commodity, a trifle."

It was during this era that luxury became something of a buzz word.

Paul Bertrand ran a fashionable toy shop for adults in Westminster,

where Frederick, Prince of Wales,

extravagantly spent over £700 in a single visit on knick-knacks.

His purchases ranged from a silver corkscrew

to a selection of antique porcelain.

Frederick was desperate to look up-to-date,

because for the first time,

the Royal Court was not associated with all that was fashionable.

You can see this in a very striking way,

if you look at what women were wearing at court.

One of the most incredible dresses to have survived

from the Georgian period is the Rockingham Mantua.

Joanna Marschner, Curator of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection,

believes this glittering relic was a fabulous creation, yes,

but out of step with modern society.

So, Joanna, this is a dress fit to be worn at the Georgian Court.

You can just see,

this is the flashiest dress that you can even begin to imagine.

And it was really, really expensive.

It is made out of the most precious textile.

It's called an orris tissue, woven with real silver.

There was something a bit uniform-like about it, too,

wasn't there? You had to wear something like this

-if you were going to appear at court?

-The absolute courtly giveaway

is that you wore it with a petticoat.

And the petticoat stemmed out from here,

and you can do the same thing on the other side.

And it is enormous.

It would have come down like this.

And it stood out like a piece of pasteboard,

it really was a bit like a billboard.

This gives a sense of how impractically vast it is, doesn't it?

It must've been pretty difficult to walk in.

But that's sort of the point of this type of dress, isn't it?

This is a style of dress for a person

who will go to one of these lovely gatherings.

And you'd have stood there, just looking glamorous and glorious.

And as this style falls away in fashionable circles,

in the court, it gets ever more entrenched.

Now, yes, these dresses are spectacular

and they're otherworldly,

but as the reign of George II goes on,

they're getting increasingly out of step with contemporary society.

At court, they're still wearing a type of dress

that had been fashionable in the real world 60 years before.

And there's a brilliant description from the very late Georgian period

of an elderly court beauty going to the palace

in one of these dresses, wearing a bit too much make-up.

She's travelling by sedan chair, and through its glass window,

she looks like "a specimen from a natural history collection."

She looks like "the foetus of a hippopotamus

"pickled in a bottle of brandy."

The court was turning into an outsized bauble...

..ornamentally important,

yet increasingly separate from the serious business of getting ahead.

The drivers of taste were now the merchants, the middling sort.

And they had a fresh passion -

the novel.

The 18th century saw the birth of this new literary genre,

which was driven by a growing and increasingly literate

middle rank in society.

But many novelists were keen on attacking the luxury

enjoyed by their readers.

They believed Empire products were corrupting the British.

One of the most vociferous critics of luxury

was the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett.

In this novel, Humphry Clinker,

there's a sort of an antihero called Matthew Bramble.

And Matthew Bramble goes on this great voyage or adventure

all around Britain, and everywhere he finds debauchery, and conmen,

and pimps, and particularly, the nouveau riche.

Smollett is very down on their empty glitter and glare.

Now, Tobias Smollett and Matthew Bramble are practically

the same person, and can claim to be the original grumpy old man.

Smollett had such a pessimistic and negative view of life

that his rival writers called him "snail fungus."

Smollett ridiculed the super-rich in their mock Palladian palaces.

Behind the facades of these la-di-da Georgian town houses, he said,

lay dirty secrets.

Smollett thought that Georgian cities were

"the grand sources of luxury and corruption"

and that their inhabitants were controlled

"by the demons of licentiousness."

Smollett was just one of many writers who revealed that

the engine driving much of Britain's economic success

was far less palatable than tea or sugar.

Professor James Walvin has made the slave trade his life's study.

He believes that slavery seeped into

every pore of Britain's emerging empire.

So, how does this trade actually work?

What are the goods that are involved?

We talk of it as a triangular trade.

It's much more complex, geographically, than that.

Nonetheless, that's the basic core of it.

Ships that leave here, Bristol, Liverpool, London,

packed to the gunnels with produce from the hinterland.

Metal goods, but, above all, textiles for West Africa.

And, in West Africa, those goods are traded for Africans.

They're traded with other African traders.

It's Africans providing the Africans for the slave ships.

And then, they're shipped across in huge numbers,

the largest enforced movement of people ever,

to the plantations of the Americas.

The last leg is the leg that brings back the produce

that the slaves had grown. It's tobacco. It's sugar.

It's dye - dyestuffs.

Rice, which we use for starch.

18th-century clothing, ladies' fashionable clothing,

starched and beautiful, where does the starch come from?

It comes from rice. And who grows the rice? Africans in South Carolina.

What impact do you think the slave trade had on Britain's economy then?

Was it central to it?

Historians have been arguing about this now for 50, 60 years.

How central is the slave trade in the emergence of the British economy?

It's very hard to pin down to numbers.

The knock-on effect of the slave trade is extraordinary.

Who thinks, if you're looking at small textile villages in Yorkshire,

that this is somehow or other driven by the slave trade?

Who thinks of the trade in textiles from India, that this has got

something to do with the slave trade? But Africans in Jamaica

and Barbados are clothed in cool-fitting cotton,

goods from Gujarat.

The ramifications of it are extraordinary,

not merely in Britain but globally.

You're actually looking at a form of globalisation,

in a world that doesn't use the word.

Do you think people were aware of this sort of dirty secret

behind their economic success?

Or was it a case of out of sight, out of mind?

The British have traditionally not thought of slavery as something that's to do with them.

This is something to do with Africa or the Atlantic, or the Americas.

Whereas, in fact, British ships had taken them over,

it's British money that makes it possible,

it's Britain that profits from slave work.

So that it's very easy to think of yourself

as being committed to freedom and liberty,

and not remember that actually, all of your material wellbeing

is bound up with something quite different,

and that is the enslavement of millions of Africans.

Britain was helped in becoming

the biggest slave-trading nation in the world

because it had a strong navy.

Prince Frederick's supporters, singing Rule, Britannia!,

claimed that "Britons never shall be slaves."

They were praising Britain's extraordinary liberties.

But by policing British trade routes, the Royal Navy

was helping to enslave millions of Africans.

The irony was lost, not just on Frederick,

but on the majority of the British people.

His patriot faction had never been more influential.

King George II felt that he was losing the PR battle to his son

and relations between them were as bad as ever.

There was still no love lost between father and son.

George II was overheard saying

that he cared for his son "no more than a louse,"

and that when Frederick succeeded, "he'd ruin everything."

But the king was wrong about this.

When Frederick was only 44, he quite unexpectedly died.

He'd been out in the rain, he caught a cold,

and what actually killed him was a clot of blood on the lungs.

The news reached George II one evening,

when he was playing at cards with a whole load of courtiers.

Now, they all turned to look at him and they were closely watching him

for further evidence that he'd hated his son.

And they thought they'd found it, because he didn't react at all.

His face was impassive.

This could've been cold-heartedness, or it could have been

that the king was just following rigid royal etiquette -

never to express emotion in public.

So, we were never to have King Frederick I,

described by his supporters as "the greatest king we never had."

Frederick had been the most popular member of the royal family.

But his funeral, here at Westminster Abbey,

was marred by disorganisation, rain and a lack of refreshments.

It confirmed everything Frederick's friends believed about George II

and his favouritism towards his younger son, the Duke of Cumberland.

The death of his son got the king thinking about his own mortality

and he now made a new will.

He designated his grandson, the future George III, as his successor.

The king's first idea had been to say that his second

and favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland,

should be Regent, if necessary, but this wouldn't wash.

Butcher Cumberland was just too unpopular.

In fact, when Frederick died, people on the street were heard to say,

"Oh, we wish it had been his brother."

Frederick's death threw his patriot supporters into turmoil.

Those who had hoped to rise to power in his reign

were extremely disappointed.

Their promised peerages had gone up in smoke.

In the wake of Frederick's death,

it was his widow Augusta who reacted the most decisively.

One of the reasons that we don't fully understand

the character of Prince Frederick is because his wife burnt his papers.

And she did it to control his lasting reputation,

so that no hint of scandal would get out.

I think that this shows that

Augusta was quite a politically savvy person,

and it also demonstrates a certain steeliness.

She would now devote the rest of her life

to looking after the interests of Frederick's son, and hers,

the little boy who was her route to power, the future King George III.

Augusta was worried that if she antagonised King George II,

he could take her son away from her,

just as George I had taken Princess Caroline's children.

Augusta had lost her husband.

She didn't want to lose her children as well.

But she knew that she had to act cleverly and with subtlety.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures,

believes this portrait is Augusta's manifesto

for becoming the matriarch of the Georgian dynasty.

What do you think Augusta's motivation was,

getting all this put together?

First of all, this is a portrait of a widow,

painted in the same year that her husband has died.

They're looking quite cheerful.

I think it's difficult immediately to understand that,

except I think that the idea is

that you wear a black veil, of course, for form's sake,

but your duties of looking after your children

and looking after the realm continue

and you might as well undertake them in a cheerful way.

Is she saying, "Look, he may be dead, but his work continues"?

I'm sure that's exactly the message. "I'm carrying the flame."

It makes me think almost of a piece of propaganda for an election.

-"This is the team. Vote for us."

-Exactly!

On one side, you have the role of the monarch,

represented here by the late heir to the throne, Frederick,

the Prince of Wales, and, on the other side, you have Britannia,

that being the constitution.

And what's going on underneath Britannia?

That's all very significant.

That's the key, I think, to the entire allegory.

There are some scales,

and exactly balanced in the scales are the crown and the cap of liberty.

The emblem of Britain, the lion, is holding another cap of liberty.

So, if you want to take away the liberty of the British people,

you've got a lion to fight with.

The mere fact of presenting the royal family

in this ingratiating fashion is an expression of British liberty.

What of the significance of the activities of the children?

-They're doing things that make Britain great, aren't they?

-Yes.

Yes. In this era, there was a convention that naval power

was protective of liberty,

whereas the power of a standing army

was sometimes thought to threaten liberty.

So, I think it is important

that they're engaged in the defence of the realm,

but it's specifically in the naval defence of the realm.

Augusta was continuing Frederick's legacy,

promoting the patriot philosophy of liberty and a strong navy,

controlled here from the headquarters of the admiralty.

Britain was now the largest naval power in the world.

But this was turning us into

a nation greedy for territory and conquest.

Our continued skirmishes with the French

built towards a new and global conflict,

the Seven Years' War.

Britain was empire-building.

We weren't content with our 13 colonies in the Americas.

We wanted more. And this wasn't just a land grab.

It was a war over trade and trading routes.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the question at stake here

was global dominance by the British or by the French.

So, the fighting was played out in America,

but also in Africa, in India,

and down here in the Philippines, with the Battle of Manila.

Winston Churchill came up with a good name for this conflict,

the Seven Years' War.

He called it "the First World War".

Ever the old soldier, the king went into battle mode,

coordinating army tactics with his favourite lieutenant,

the Duke of Cumberland.

He took to shuffling around the palace in the same old coat

he'd worn at the Battle of Dettingen,

and he sent an army into Europe to face the French.

But it went badly.

George II was out of touch.

Wars were no longer won by kings on horseback leading from the front.

What was happening in Europe was a bit of a sideshow.

This statue shows George II dressed as a Roman emperor.

And this was the context in which he used the word "empire",

when he was talking about history,

when he was talking about the Romans.

The politician William Pitt, on the other hand, understood

that Britain could aspire to have an empire in the present day.

Pitt knew that what was happening in Europe was important,

but it wasn't the most important thing.

What was at stake was domination of the globe.

Here's William Pitt, Secretary of State,

at home at Chatham House. He was to become Earl of Chatham.

Never short of confidence,

Pitt took military strategy firmly in hand.

His opening gambit was, "I am sure I can save this country

"and no-one else can."

During this time, poor old William Pitt was ill,

so he had to stay at home here at Chatham House.

And all the great and the good

came trooping up to his bedroom to discuss strategy.

There's a really nice picture of William Pitt being tucked up in bed

and the room was very cold.

So the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle,

got into another bed on the other side of the room

and together, the two of them lay there,

shaping British foreign policy.

It was here that Pitt came up with his masterstroke -

to use both the Army and the Navy.

He sent the British troops to the Continent

to tie down the French troops, to keep them busy.

Meanwhile, he sent the British Navy all around the globe,

snapping up French colonies.

Oddly, it was only in the last gasp of George II's reign

that these two elements,

the Army of the king and Frederick's Navy,

managed to come together,

to coalesce in this defining war with the French.

1759 was the year of military miracles.

With the triumph of all Pitt's plans,

Britain effectively became a world superpower.

George II was by now deaf and blind in one eye,

but the old king provided an excellent focus for national celebration

in what became known as the "annus mirabilis",

the miraculous year.

And, yet, his new empire was of little consolation

to George personally.

In his youth, George II had suffered from these terrible temper tantrums.

His rage had given him energy.

But, as time went on, his friends started to die off.

His children were dying, one by one, predeceasing him.

As he grew older, he grew wiser and more contemplative.

And, ironically, this happened at the very same time

that Britain grew ever more powerful and successful.

His beloved wife and five of his eight children were dead.

His famous military zeal was ebbing away,

and he regretted his former harshness and aggression.

George II's empire, as it stood, would not exist for long.

A generation later, Britain would have to deal with the next conflict,

and the loss of America.

We had denied our colonies the liberty we so highly valued,

but Americans would want it badly enough to fight for it.

This was a war George II would not live to see.

He died on October 25th 1760,

the last of the German-born Georgian kings

who came over from Hanover to plug Britain's dynastic gap.

The king who succeeded him couldn't have been more different.

George II's grandson, George III,

would reject everything his grandfather stood for

to become the patriotic, British king

his own father, Frederick, had never had the chance to be.

This coach was designed for the coronation of George III.

But, unfortunately, it was so fancy that it wasn't finished in time.

It has been used at every coronation since.

It weighs four tonnes, and it takes eight horses to pull it.

But it isn't just a vehicle.

It's also a sort of rolling manifesto for the British monarchy.

George III's coach in the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace

depicts Britain's naval victories,

at the precise moment of her greatest triumph

in the Seven Years' War.

If you want to see what ruling the waves looks like,

here it is, in all of its gilded glory.

Even Neptune and his four Tritons are on the side of the British.

By the time we get to George III, the process of transplantation

from Hanover to Britain is pretty much complete.

And George III emphasised this. In his first public speech,

he distanced himself from his father and his grandfather.

"I was born and educated in this country," he said.

"I glory in the name of Briton."

# Zadok the Priest

# And Nathan the Prophet... #

Beyond all the bling and the bombast,

this royal coach was saying that Britain's new king

belonged to a confident and deep-rooted royal dynasty.

The Hanoverians had seen off every single threat to their survival.

The Georgian kings were like successful stepfathers to the nation.

They'd been brought in and grafted on and yet,

people began to accept them as part of the family,

because of their killer advantages, their Protestantism,

and the support of Parliament.

People today often overlook the first two Georges,

but actually, they were pretty successful as rulers.

Under them, Britain went from being a bit of a provincial backwater

to a global superpower.

And this coach stands for Britain's self-confidence in 1760.

The Hanoverian dynasty was now secure.

But isn't it funny to think that the British monarchy

was made in Germany?

# Zadok the Priest

# And Nathan the Prophet

# Anointed Solomon king. #