"Sir Lewis Namier had the advantage of access to the personal correspondence of the principal figures. He was struck by the pettiness of Newcastle's preoccupations, and impressed by the sincerity of the King as revealed in his youthful letters. Since Namier wrote it has been impossible to believe that George III consciously sought to make his kingship absolute, or indeed that his constitutional ideas were anything but platitudinously conventional, truly those of a Revolution monarch. Yet Namier did not adequately recognise the extent to which the programme of a patriot king must give rise to legitimate concern about the new policies adopted. Nor was he altogether frank about the attitudes and language which prevailed at court during Bute's supremacy."