This did not mean that George did not want Roman Catholics to enjoy other civil and religious rights beyond the franchise. Unsurprisingly, considering the uncompromising words of the Oath and the solemnity of the occasion, he had a lifelong belief that Catholic Emancipation would contravene what he had sworn before God. So help me God.” He then kissed the Bible and was anointed King. The King stood up from his throne in the Abbey, walked to the altar, laid his right hand on the Bible, and answered, “The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by Law? And will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the united Church of England and Ireland, and the countries thereunto belonging?” The King was asked a series of questions by Archbishop Secker, which included: The Coronation Oath that George III took in 1760 had first been devised for William and Mary in 1689, and contained an unequivocal rejection of Roman Catholicism.
In the half-century since the Act, the Hanoverians survived not just one but two Catholic attempts to recapture the throne, by James II’s son the Old Pretender in 1715 and his grandson the Young Pretender (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) in 1745. The main purpose of the Act of Settlement of 1701 was to exclude Roman Catholics from the Throne, so George essentially owed his claim entirely to his Protestantism (the Hanoverians were Lutherans who converted to Anglicanism when George I acceded). I hope by the end of this article, Catholics will agree that the king, who acceded in 1760, was right to defend the politico-religious status quo throughout his reign, the longest of any king in British history. In my new biography of him, I try to explain how his opposition to Catholic Emancipation was based on George’s sincerely held principles and profound religious beliefs rather than mere anti-papist prejudice, although his stance also accorded with what was politically expedient at the time. In the long Via Dolorosa down which Roman Catholics had to march to win the franchise before 1829, they hardly had a more resolute opponent than King George III.
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