George III died (1820) at the age of eighty-two. During ten years he
had been blind, deaf, and crazy, having lost his reason not very long
after the jubilee, which celebrated the fiftieth year of his reign
(1809). Once, in a lucid interval, he was found by the Queen singing
a hymn and playing an accompaniment on the harpsichord.
He then knelt and prayed aloud for her, for his family, and for the
nation; and in closing, for himself, that it might please God to avert
his heavy calamity, or grant him resignation to bear it. Then he
burst into tears, and his reason again fled.[1] In consequence of the
incapacity of the King, his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was
appointed regent (1811), and on the King's death came to the throne as
George IV.
[1] See Thackeray's "Four Georges."