George II died in the early hours of October 25, 1760, and his grandson George inherited the throne the same day. The crown passed quietly. The new king was twenty-two and was born in London, unlike the German-born Hanoverians before him. He said he was born and bred in England.
The young king framed his rule as a break from the old court. He dropped the Whig grandees who had run things under his grandfather and tried to govern through ministers he trusted, and the move redrew politics and fed the rivalry that later split the country. His reign would run nearly sixty years.
The stakes were large. Britain was fighting the Seven Years' War across the globe, and the peace that followed made it the top colonial power, yet within a generation the American colonies were lost and George's name became tied to that defeat in the new United States. The peace made Britain first. He also lived through the early Industrial Revolution.
He outlived many of his children and most of his ministers. The king went blind and ill in later life, and his son ruled for him from 1811. George III died in 1820, the longest-serving king Britain had known to that point, and the last to claim the United States.