Historedia
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Onset of the King's derangement

When
October 1788
Where
Kingdom of Great Britain
Part of
Onset of the Regency Crisis of 1788

George III descended into a bout of mental illness in late October 1788, incapacitating him and beginning the Regency Crisis.

A longer episode of disease in George III may have begun in the summer of 1788, following a possible brief episode in 1765. In late October 1788 the King descended into a bout of mental illness. Pitt's government faced a major crisis as the King fell victim to a mysterious illness, a form of mental disorder that incapacitated him. The supplied sources differ on the precise onset date, with the legacy record indicating 1 October 1788 while the narrative passages place the descent into illness in late October.

Sources

  1. George III Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-28
  2. Charles James Fox Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-02
  3. William Pitt the Younger Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-13

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.