Meanwhile on the 20th of November Parliament had met to hear his first speech from a new king. For on the 25th of October, just before the coming of the news of Kloster Kampen, King George the Second had died suddenly, having lived to see the glories of Queen Anne's reign¹ brought back by Pitt, and the fame of Blenheim and Oudenarde revived not only by Minden and Warburg but by Wandewash and Quebec. George the Third struck a new and strange note in his speech from the throne. "Born and educated in England," he said—and the words were of his own insertion—"I glory in the name of Briton"; and the phrase fell pleasantly on ears that did not love the sound of Hanover; though what this sudden outburst of insular² patriotism³ on the King's part might portend⁴ to his German allies was not yet revealed. The estimates for the Army were passed with little difficulty, though the Establishment showed a considerable increase. The new regiments⁶ that appeared on the list, indeed, were few, for a system had been initiated⁷ of raising an indefinite number of independent companies; but these were gradually combined into regiments, and before the campaign opened there was already a corps⁸ numbered the hundredth of the Line.[372] The total number of men voted on the British Establishment was one hundred[521] and four thousand; besides which the embodied⁹ militia¹⁰ was increased from eighteen to twenty-seven thousand, making, together with the troops on the Irish Establishment, over one hundred and forty thousand men raised in the British possessions alone. Adding the mercenary forces of Hanover, Hesse, and Brunswick, the number of soldiers in British pay fell little short of two hundred thousand.

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