The joyful Americans could not know how little King George
aspired to be thought the Restorer of Liberty. In reality he was
extremely sulky in his silent, stubborn way over the repeal of
the Stamp Act, and vexed most particularly at the part which he
himself had been forced to play in it. The idea of a Patriot
King, conceived by Lord Bolingbroke (one-time Jacobite exile) and
instilled into the mind of the young Hanoverian monarch by an
ambitious mother, had little to do with liberty, either British
or colonial, but had much to do with authority. The Patriot King
was to be a king indeed, seeking advice of all virtuous men of
whatever connections, without being bound by any man or faction
of men. It was not to restore liberty, nor yet to destroy it, but
to destroy factions, that the King was ambitious; and for this
purpose he desired a ministry that would do his bidding without
too much question. If Mr. Grenville did not satisfy His Majesty,
it was not on account of the Stamp Act, in respect to which the
King was wholly of Mr. Grenville's opinion that it was a just law
and ought to be enforced. In July, 1765, when Mr. Grenville was
dismissed, there had indeed as yet been no open resistance in
America; and if the King had been somewhat annoyed by the high
talk of his loyal subjects in Virginia, he had been annoyed much
more by Mr.
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