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now even more isolated; his mother feared the king's intentions and took pains to shelter her son from all but the most carefully scrutinized influences. In 1755 the key influence was John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, a Scot, the adviser -- not, as some whispered, the lover-of George's mother.
     
    Princess Augusta introduced Bute to her son, and for the next five years he served as the prince's tutor and friend. The friendship seems to have developed easily -- in part, we may suppose, because George craved affection and kindness and Bute responded with both. Yet warm as their relationship was, it was not between equals. Bute held the upper band: he was twenty-five years older, strongly opinionated, obviously intelligent, and be was in charge of the prince's education. Although Bute possessed the learning required, he was not a good teacher. To be sure, he launched the prince on an impressive series of studies and saw to it that George continued those already under way. And George at this time had sampled books and subjects far beyond those ordinarily taken up by an English gentleman.
     
    When Bute became the prince's tutor the prince was seventeen years of age. He had at least an elementary knowledge of French, German, and Latin, less Greek, some mathematics and physical science. He had read fairly widely, though superficially, in history, and he had, in the manner of those of birth and breeding, studied military fortification. His previous tutors had not neglected to introduce their pupil to the social attainments necessary to a monarch -- riding, fencing, dancing, music. And, of course, the prince had received careful religious instruction according to the creed of the Church of England.
     
    Bute saw to it that his charge continued these studies and personally supervised a more thorough study of English and European history. In the process, the prince absorbed much knowledge of the British constitution and of statecraft and yet did not understand either. In Bute's unpracticed hands the prince's insecure, rather rigid personality grew more rigid and no' more confident, though he became proud, and intolerant of others whose views did not agree with his or his tutor's. Bute himself knew much but did not understand men or human conduct. His pride reinforced the prince's; his propensity to judge others by abstract principles -- he lacked the experience which wiser men rely upon -- strengthened a similar tendency in the prince. Master and pupil then and later commonly mistook inflexibility for personal strength and character. Understandably, George's studies did not produce the qualities needed by a monarch: good judgment and a capacity to take fully into account the principles and interests of others without giving over one's own.
     
    George III was twenty-two when he ascended the throne in 1760. For the next few years he clung to his prejudices and to Bute with a tenacity that reflected his and Bute's miscomprehension of the political world. He would reform their world, he thought, and make virtue his real consort. Factional politics, which were of course based on interest, not ideology, revolted him -- and he would somehow change them. If this dream soon disappeared in disappointment, the king's rigidity did not, and though he learned to play the game -- at times with remarkable skill -- his early mistakes and his attachment to Bute bred a suspicion in Parliament that introduced a dozen years of instability to his government.
     

VI
    Instability in Parliament occurred at a most inopportune time -- the beginning of the American crisis. Quite clearly, English political arrangements worked better in periods of calm than in crisis. They reflected the views of the satisfied, of the haves more than the have-nots, and by their inertia protected the liberties of the subject, defined negatively. But how else was liberty to be defined? Fortunately, a static order stood in the way of change, which no one of consequence -- that is, no