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The King's Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776
Reinterpreting the first century of American history, Brendan McConville argues that colonial society developed a political culture marked by strong attachment to Great Britain's monarchs. This intense allegiance continued almost until the moment of independence, an event defined by an emotional break with the king. By reading American history forward from the seventeenth century rather than backward from the Revolution, McConville shows that political conflicts long assumed to foreshadow the events of 1776 were in fact fought out by factions who invoked competing visions of the king and appropriated royal rites rather than used abstract republican rights or pro-democratic proclamations. The American Revolution, McConville contends, emerged out of the fissure caused by the unstable mix of affective attachments to the king and a weak imperial government. Sure to provoke debate, The King's Three Faces offers a powerful counterthesis to dominant American historiography.
322 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Brendan McConville
9 books2 followersBrendan McConville has written several books on early American history, including The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1766. Professor of History at Boston University, he is co-chair of the David Center for the Study of the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and cohost of the Boston-area radio program The Historians.
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February 25, 2020
In The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776, Professor Brendan McConville, now of Boston University, seeks to re-frame our understanding of colonial period of American history, at least that portion from the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 through the coming of the American Revolution.
McConville argues that historians have tended to read backwards from the aftermath of an American Revolution that resulted in a relatively republican and free market nation. The influence of the momentous event of political separation from England had obscured, write McConville, the ability of historians to appreciate the distinct character of the societies making up British North America from the American nation which would emerge.
McConville suggests that, after the restoration of the English monarchy in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when the House of Hanover, with German roots and Protestant sympathies in place of the House of Stuart, which had been Catholic, the English colonies of North America developed a stronger attachment to the restored Protestant monarchy than actually existed in England itself.
At the edge of the empire and unable to learn directly about their monarch, asserts Professor McConvile, several factors fed the colonists' self-understanding of themselves as subjects of a Protestant king. Keep in mind one factor that the book does not dwell upon - the sort of religious wars between Protestant and Catholics that had rocked continental Europe - played out directly in England. "By the 1740's, the predominant political ideology in the [English colonies in North America] was a kind of benevolent royalism that grew from the broader Protestant political culture." (p. 136). McConnell links this shared culture to several factors, such as a linking of Catholicism and attacks on English liberties, a press that prompted positive attachments to the individual Hanoverian kings, political rituals, and the trade in consumer products with images of the kings and their family members.
Thus, at least for a substantial portion of the colonists, the English monarch became seen as an independent source of sovereignty, with authority to rule and to protect his subjects in the colonies, and to intervene when Parliament breached their English liberties. It was that sort of perspective, not shared by the people of England proper, nor by Parliament nor the monarchy, which McConnville assets explains why many colonists looked for a decades to their king to protect them from Parliament and the king's advisers.
Yet, it was only between 1773 and 1773, argues the book, that this emotional tie and connection to their monarch began to break. Thus, he puts substantial weigh on the demolition of many statutes of King George III and other signs of the royal family in the colonies in these later dates. He posits these actions as a de facto regicide, by royal subjects who had lost faith in their Protestant king and who were arriving at a new identity as Americans at the same time of a symbolic funeral for their king, to paragraphs the title of one chapter, "A Funeral Fit For A King."
McConville's thesis is riveting in its originality. He has a fair point about the difficulty of thinking outside and beyond the key events of an era which naturally cast a large shadow. The book has the fine feature of using footnotes, rather than endnotes, allowing the reader to quickly confirm the books and articles and other historians with whom the book interacts.
Yet, I do not think he captures the full story, and my reason draws partly upon my own views of the various explanations various historians provide of historical causation. I often think that a new interpretation might not displace a prior or competing analysis so much as tell another link in the story.
For example, Dr. McConville discusses at certain points another important book which I recently read and reviewed here, T.H. Breen's The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, which asserts that the growth of the British consumer goods market and credit market into the American colonies led the colonists to see themselves, across the lines of the colonies' borders and the tyraany of distance, to seek all British American colonists as being mistreated by the British government when taxes were levied upon them after 1763. That
I think both scholars add something to the discussion but I also do not think either should be seen as definitive, nor even the leading explanation for their related topics.
Despite this misgiving, I do think Dr. McConville's book is well worth your time. I read this one slowly, not due to any issue with his writing, but to allow my mind to soak in his argument and evidence. I
McConville argues that historians have tended to read backwards from the aftermath of an American Revolution that resulted in a relatively republican and free market nation. The influence of the momentous event of political separation from England had obscured, write McConville, the ability of historians to appreciate the distinct character of the societies making up British North America from the American nation which would emerge.
McConville suggests that, after the restoration of the English monarchy in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when the House of Hanover, with German roots and Protestant sympathies in place of the House of Stuart, which had been Catholic, the English colonies of North America developed a stronger attachment to the restored Protestant monarchy than actually existed in England itself.
At the edge of the empire and unable to learn directly about their monarch, asserts Professor McConvile, several factors fed the colonists' self-understanding of themselves as subjects of a Protestant king. Keep in mind one factor that the book does not dwell upon - the sort of religious wars between Protestant and Catholics that had rocked continental Europe - played out directly in England. "By the 1740's, the predominant political ideology in the [English colonies in North America] was a kind of benevolent royalism that grew from the broader Protestant political culture." (p. 136). McConnell links this shared culture to several factors, such as a linking of Catholicism and attacks on English liberties, a press that prompted positive attachments to the individual Hanoverian kings, political rituals, and the trade in consumer products with images of the kings and their family members.
Thus, at least for a substantial portion of the colonists, the English monarch became seen as an independent source of sovereignty, with authority to rule and to protect his subjects in the colonies, and to intervene when Parliament breached their English liberties. It was that sort of perspective, not shared by the people of England proper, nor by Parliament nor the monarchy, which McConnville assets explains why many colonists looked for a decades to their king to protect them from Parliament and the king's advisers.
Yet, it was only between 1773 and 1773, argues the book, that this emotional tie and connection to their monarch began to break. Thus, he puts substantial weigh on the demolition of many statutes of King George III and other signs of the royal family in the colonies in these later dates. He posits these actions as a de facto regicide, by royal subjects who had lost faith in their Protestant king and who were arriving at a new identity as Americans at the same time of a symbolic funeral for their king, to paragraphs the title of one chapter, "A Funeral Fit For A King."
McConville's thesis is riveting in its originality. He has a fair point about the difficulty of thinking outside and beyond the key events of an era which naturally cast a large shadow. The book has the fine feature of using footnotes, rather than endnotes, allowing the reader to quickly confirm the books and articles and other historians with whom the book interacts.
Yet, I do not think he captures the full story, and my reason draws partly upon my own views of the various explanations various historians provide of historical causation. I often think that a new interpretation might not displace a prior or competing analysis so much as tell another link in the story.
For example, Dr. McConville discusses at certain points another important book which I recently read and reviewed here, T.H. Breen's The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, which asserts that the growth of the British consumer goods market and credit market into the American colonies led the colonists to see themselves, across the lines of the colonies' borders and the tyraany of distance, to seek all British American colonists as being mistreated by the British government when taxes were levied upon them after 1763. That
I think both scholars add something to the discussion but I also do not think either should be seen as definitive, nor even the leading explanation for their related topics.
Despite this misgiving, I do think Dr. McConville's book is well worth your time. I read this one slowly, not due to any issue with his writing, but to allow my mind to soak in his argument and evidence. I
April 6, 2017
In The King’s Three Faces, McConville claims that the republicanism of the American Revolution did not permeate society as early as many historians claim. He argues that historians are often plagued by hindsight and view the events leading up the American Revolution with the idea of the Revolution in mind and this impacts how they view and interpret those events. In the period between the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution, the British empire and the colonies underwent a variety of changes. McConville argues that these changes were not caused by colonists “protorepublican” desires, but by “explosive population growth, an expanding print culture, new ethnic and racial tensions, and warfare with French and Native Americans”. The colonists remained loyal to the king while demanding changes to the imperial structure of British government. The ideas of republicanism did not emerge in the colonies until 1773 as faith in the king began to wane due to the empire’s inability to keep up with the changing demands of the colonies. However, throughout the decades leading up to the American Revolution, McConville argues, “royalism was a primary force of change before 1776”, and the colonists increased their loyalty to the king while looking for ways to change the imperial government and parliament.
July 4, 2025
A dense book, one which took me nearly a year to finish. The central argument is this: there existed a cult of devotion to the British monarchy in the American colonies which was going strong right up until it became clear in 1775-76 that the kindly, paternal monarch to whom the colonists appealed was not going to intervene on their behalf. Rather, George III took the lead in making preparations to end the rebellion with military force. This caused the Colonists to reevaluate their political aims and professed loyalties, and transformed the war from a rebellion against corrupt ministers and a grasping Parliament, to a revolution bent on toppling monarchy in British North America.
Does it sound strange that colonists were actually religiously devoted to their Protestant Hanoverian monarchs before 1776? It shouldn’t be. It is the goal of every revolution to erase the memory of what came before it, and the American Revolution was no different in symbolically resetting the clock.
McConville presents extremely thorough research in which he presents the pre-1776 views of the colonists in their own words. They professed fawning loyalty to their king, they revered the memory of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, they “gloried in the name of Briton” to use George III’s own phrase. Many conservatives deplored the anarchy of the Revolution, longingly looking back to the British constitution. Overall, it was not primarily a Roman Republican past that the colonists looked back to in the early stages of the AmRev, rather it was 17th century antecedents in British history.
“Caesar had his Brutus, and Charles I had his Cromwell…” as Patrick Henry controversially said, mirroring an example from classical antiquity with one from recent English history. (Cromwell’s memory was actually rehabilitated unsurprisingly as the Revolution gained steam.)
Goodness this is a dense and magisterial work, but I recommend it to you if you have the time to devote to it. McConville in my opinion defends his case well, but I would like to see another book which covers how the average colonist was transformed from a loyal monarchist to an eager republican.
Does it sound strange that colonists were actually religiously devoted to their Protestant Hanoverian monarchs before 1776? It shouldn’t be. It is the goal of every revolution to erase the memory of what came before it, and the American Revolution was no different in symbolically resetting the clock.
McConville presents extremely thorough research in which he presents the pre-1776 views of the colonists in their own words. They professed fawning loyalty to their king, they revered the memory of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, they “gloried in the name of Briton” to use George III’s own phrase. Many conservatives deplored the anarchy of the Revolution, longingly looking back to the British constitution. Overall, it was not primarily a Roman Republican past that the colonists looked back to in the early stages of the AmRev, rather it was 17th century antecedents in British history.
“Caesar had his Brutus, and Charles I had his Cromwell…” as Patrick Henry controversially said, mirroring an example from classical antiquity with one from recent English history. (Cromwell’s memory was actually rehabilitated unsurprisingly as the Revolution gained steam.)
Goodness this is a dense and magisterial work, but I recommend it to you if you have the time to devote to it. McConville in my opinion defends his case well, but I would like to see another book which covers how the average colonist was transformed from a loyal monarchist to an eager republican.
August 3, 2021
Enjoyable and convincing analysis of the nature of the colonial relationship with the British crown and government. Highly recommend.
August 7, 2009
A useful corrective, but probably not the paradigm shift the author would like it to be. Its focus is too narrow to get the job done properly, I suspect, and the evidence too limited. But The King's Three Faces warrants thought beyond what I am able to give it now.
Brendan McConville believes that American historians are guilty of whiggishly reading republicanism, economic liberalism, and evangelical egalitarianism back into the prerevolutionary period. Against the whig consensus, he argues that the American colonists between 1688 and 1776 were passionately royalist and imperialist. The crisis of 1776 resulted not from a cresting wave of popular republicanism, he suggests, but rather from a crisis of royal identity. The king's authority was understood in too many paradoxical ways. The king presented, as it were, too many faces in the colonies. A constitutional crisis followed.
After the Glorious Revolution and especially after the Hanoverian succession, according to McConville, American provincial elites had to reinterpret the basis of the crown's authority over the empire. It was not easy for Americans to accept the royalization of their colonial charters under the new regime. But they settled on various forms of the idea of contract to explain their changed circumstances -- which had the effect, McConville suggests, of somewhat secularizing their conceptions of the empire. The new secular order was defined (deliberately by imperial officials) by a calendar of royal holidays, such as Pope's Day (i.e., Guy Fawkes' Day) which came to be celebrated with increasing verve after 1688. These celebrations were actually much more intense in America than in England, where the king was a less important symbol. Perhaps this was in part because royal history was so important to the colonies as a source of unity. In almanacs and other religious publications, the colonists stressed the place that William and Mary and the Georges had in a long British Protestant tradition -- and indeed, in a distinctive English history stretching back to the Roman era. The colonists thus firmly attached themselves to the crown and the empire in their passions. But in more concrete matters -- in patterns of land tenure, patronage, and finance -- the colonists lacked the ties that bound the inhabitants of the home island to the monarch. Royal authority in the colonies remained abstract and affective, leaving open the door to intellectual strains that did not exist in England. "The system of offices and patronage appointments that composed the early modern realm's institutional architecture," McConville observes, "remained immature in the American colonies. In the demographic, social, and political context that began to emerge, the imperial state's disjointed character became a threat to public order" (145).
McConville argues, in fact, that the king's centrality in American political culture was a large part of the empire's problem. "The king" was becoming all things to all subjects; his authority and benevolence were invoked in mid-century by everyone, including armed rebels chafing under the rule of provincial elites. Meanwhile, American writers were trying to "put God, king, and history back together again after their Humpty-Dumptylike fall in the seventeenth century" (192), brewing up a somewhat unpersuasive doctrine of sacred royal "neoabsolutism" that was not entirely consistent with a parallel effort by the colonial gentry to restore order at the local level. Imperial reformer-bureaucrats like Thomas Pownall tried to centralize royal authority over the colonies but failed to capture the colonial imagination; they tried to redefine the imperial political structure without centralizing the imperial political economy or financial structure. Thus, the actual exercise of power in the colonies remained remarkably fragmented, and the king's name was invoked to legitimize and define conflicting arrangements. In the 1770s, the colonists suddenly realized that the king himself disagreed with their notions about the constitution, and the result was a sudden break with him, formalized in acts of violence against symbols of the crown and the official church. Nevertheless, McConville suggests in an epilogue, much of the old aristocratic, patronage-centered, and church-centered mindset of the colonies persisted into the nineteenth century.
Brendan McConville believes that American historians are guilty of whiggishly reading republicanism, economic liberalism, and evangelical egalitarianism back into the prerevolutionary period. Against the whig consensus, he argues that the American colonists between 1688 and 1776 were passionately royalist and imperialist. The crisis of 1776 resulted not from a cresting wave of popular republicanism, he suggests, but rather from a crisis of royal identity. The king's authority was understood in too many paradoxical ways. The king presented, as it were, too many faces in the colonies. A constitutional crisis followed.
After the Glorious Revolution and especially after the Hanoverian succession, according to McConville, American provincial elites had to reinterpret the basis of the crown's authority over the empire. It was not easy for Americans to accept the royalization of their colonial charters under the new regime. But they settled on various forms of the idea of contract to explain their changed circumstances -- which had the effect, McConville suggests, of somewhat secularizing their conceptions of the empire. The new secular order was defined (deliberately by imperial officials) by a calendar of royal holidays, such as Pope's Day (i.e., Guy Fawkes' Day) which came to be celebrated with increasing verve after 1688. These celebrations were actually much more intense in America than in England, where the king was a less important symbol. Perhaps this was in part because royal history was so important to the colonies as a source of unity. In almanacs and other religious publications, the colonists stressed the place that William and Mary and the Georges had in a long British Protestant tradition -- and indeed, in a distinctive English history stretching back to the Roman era. The colonists thus firmly attached themselves to the crown and the empire in their passions. But in more concrete matters -- in patterns of land tenure, patronage, and finance -- the colonists lacked the ties that bound the inhabitants of the home island to the monarch. Royal authority in the colonies remained abstract and affective, leaving open the door to intellectual strains that did not exist in England. "The system of offices and patronage appointments that composed the early modern realm's institutional architecture," McConville observes, "remained immature in the American colonies. In the demographic, social, and political context that began to emerge, the imperial state's disjointed character became a threat to public order" (145).
McConville argues, in fact, that the king's centrality in American political culture was a large part of the empire's problem. "The king" was becoming all things to all subjects; his authority and benevolence were invoked in mid-century by everyone, including armed rebels chafing under the rule of provincial elites. Meanwhile, American writers were trying to "put God, king, and history back together again after their Humpty-Dumptylike fall in the seventeenth century" (192), brewing up a somewhat unpersuasive doctrine of sacred royal "neoabsolutism" that was not entirely consistent with a parallel effort by the colonial gentry to restore order at the local level. Imperial reformer-bureaucrats like Thomas Pownall tried to centralize royal authority over the colonies but failed to capture the colonial imagination; they tried to redefine the imperial political structure without centralizing the imperial political economy or financial structure. Thus, the actual exercise of power in the colonies remained remarkably fragmented, and the king's name was invoked to legitimize and define conflicting arrangements. In the 1770s, the colonists suddenly realized that the king himself disagreed with their notions about the constitution, and the result was a sudden break with him, formalized in acts of violence against symbols of the crown and the official church. Nevertheless, McConville suggests in an epilogue, much of the old aristocratic, patronage-centered, and church-centered mindset of the colonies persisted into the nineteenth century.
May 23, 2013
The colonial faith in the King, the refusal to believe that he was not ultimately on their side perhaps with perplexity characterized as absurd, is McConville’s theme. McConville argues that the colonies where a hotbed of passionate devotion to the monarchy, and that the intense sense of betrayal engendered when the King came to the fore against the colonists in their dispute with Parliament was the real social dynamite that fueled rebellion. To make his case, McConville contends that the break with the Stuart dynasty in the Glorious Revolution, and the ongoing threat of their return with the backing of Catholic foreign powers led subsequent English monarchs to legitimize themselves as the leaders of the Protestant world. In the ongoing struggle for dynastic legitimacy the religious Kingship was central on both sides, and the controversy hottest at the periphery of the British Isles which was less uniformly Anglican than the English heartland. “Many who went to America sought to reunify the worlds of God and Man,” observes McConville of those who pined for the sanctity of monarchs who held their position by the grace of God rather than Parliament. The Hanoverian Kings in response contrasted their own rule to the threat posed by brutal Catholic despots, promoting the ideal of the Protestant Kingship which ruled by love rather than compulsion, and was viewed as a protector rather than a feared overlord. Associated with loyalty to this Kingship McConville tells us that, “by the eighteenth century’s first decades, a political marching culture like that in modern Northern Ireland, militantly Protestant and anti-Catholic, was in place in every major provincial American town and village.” McConville contends that as the Stuart threat declined and then collapsed following the Young Pretender’s defeat in 1745 the Stuart loyalists resigned themselves to Hanoverian rule. What remained at the periphery in the attitudes of both sides was an elevated regard for the King.
Treated thus by McConville, the love of the empire and the King was at a high pitch in the colonial world, but was of an emotional nature, unmoored from actual mechanisms of control. The abundance of land and the scarcity of political and religious offices limited the ability of the King to exercise control through a network of patronage as he did within the British Isles, and a rising population meant an unmet demand for offices that properly denoted social rank among the wealthy. In this way devotion to monarchy, hierarchy and patriarchy became a destabilizing force of unmet social needs, emotionally powerful but ungovernable. The primacy of the King as a source of benevolent authority in the popular mind explains for McConville both the colonists’ energy in disputing the control of the relatively obscure Parliament and the resilient belief that the King was personally on their side and only prevented in intervening for them by a clique of hostile ministers.
McConville’s vivid description of the early days of the Revolution, when statues of George III were pulled down in iconoclastic rage and melted into bullets while the local committees of the Continental Congress government terrorized loyalists, policing word and thought, is used both to bolster his conception of the monarchy as a deeply emotional institution and to create a sense of identification between the American and French revolutions. In both American and France, he suggests, it was precisely the emotional fervor aroused by the monarchy which led to unmet expectations and furious disillusionment, while in the more emotionally tepid and republican English imperial center revolution was avoided.
Treated thus by McConville, the love of the empire and the King was at a high pitch in the colonial world, but was of an emotional nature, unmoored from actual mechanisms of control. The abundance of land and the scarcity of political and religious offices limited the ability of the King to exercise control through a network of patronage as he did within the British Isles, and a rising population meant an unmet demand for offices that properly denoted social rank among the wealthy. In this way devotion to monarchy, hierarchy and patriarchy became a destabilizing force of unmet social needs, emotionally powerful but ungovernable. The primacy of the King as a source of benevolent authority in the popular mind explains for McConville both the colonists’ energy in disputing the control of the relatively obscure Parliament and the resilient belief that the King was personally on their side and only prevented in intervening for them by a clique of hostile ministers.
McConville’s vivid description of the early days of the Revolution, when statues of George III were pulled down in iconoclastic rage and melted into bullets while the local committees of the Continental Congress government terrorized loyalists, policing word and thought, is used both to bolster his conception of the monarchy as a deeply emotional institution and to create a sense of identification between the American and French revolutions. In both American and France, he suggests, it was precisely the emotional fervor aroused by the monarchy which led to unmet expectations and furious disillusionment, while in the more emotionally tepid and republican English imperial center revolution was avoided.
February 20, 2017
An interesting 'bottom up', or non-teological, viewpoint on the years leading up to the American Revolution. After discussing the book in class, we decided that the King's three faces were actually never explicitly defined by the author. We contacted him to ask for an explanation only to find out he really didn't have a succinct definition himself, admitting that the original title remained even after the book began to evolve theories that didn't clearly define the three faces.
September 4, 2014
Some really interesting ideas here:
1. That there was actually a tremendous amount of loyalty to the British Monarch in the American colonies.
2. That this loyalty has been omitted because it makes us ask hard questions.
3. That development of republican feelings was not teleological - not continuous, in a straight line - but rather sudden and fractious, with lots of violence and disagreement.
4. That continuities left over after the American Revolution were debris, not signs of continuous development of American independence.
But the book is a bit light on primary sources, surprising given McConville's enthusiasm for reading and processing the words of past Americans. The author also has an odd fondness/nostalgia for 18th-century British imperial society.
Good, but not truly great. Poses a lot of interesting research questions, though.
1. That there was actually a tremendous amount of loyalty to the British Monarch in the American colonies.
2. That this loyalty has been omitted because it makes us ask hard questions.
3. That development of republican feelings was not teleological - not continuous, in a straight line - but rather sudden and fractious, with lots of violence and disagreement.
4. That continuities left over after the American Revolution were debris, not signs of continuous development of American independence.
But the book is a bit light on primary sources, surprising given McConville's enthusiasm for reading and processing the words of past Americans. The author also has an odd fondness/nostalgia for 18th-century British imperial society.
Good, but not truly great. Poses a lot of interesting research questions, though.
November 30, 2011
a bit repetitive, but an informative read on the seventy pears preceding the Revolution.
February 21, 2016
This book has an interesting and new viewpoint; it is a little academic in style, having to prove a statement with LOTS of examples which can get repetitive.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews