With the tragic doings in the West of England during the Monmouth rebellion, Weymouth itself seems to have had little or no part, although it appears more than probable that some Weymouth men rallied to the standard of the ill-fated Duke at Bridport or Taunton. The history of the town as a seaside resort commences a century later with the visit of George III in 1789. Finding it picturesque and healthy, the King afterwards made it his chief summer place of residence. Although the town was at this time, according to a contemporary writer, not much more than a straggling assemblage of fishermen’s huts, with a few family mansions and merchants’ residences along the sea-front, with a wide expanse of low, marshy ground at the back of them, it soon became a fashionable resort. Then the present-day busy and prosperous chief thoroughfare of St Mary’s Street was little more than a row of thatched cottages with a few shops and houses of larger size sandwiched in between; whilst the other street, known as St Thomas’, was an ill-paved road leading to some small houses with picturesque gardens and wooden fences in front of them. With this first visit of King George III, the rapid rise of the town was assured, for not only did a large number of the nobility and Court officials take up their residence in attendance on the King and his family, but also numberless other fashionable folk, anxious to follow the Court, and by doing so bask in some of the glamour which surrounds royalty, came in great numbers. More houses became necessary, and as the old town then afforded few good building sites, a large number of the new residences were erected on the ground skirting the magnificent bay, and facing the sea. Weymouth in those days must have resembled St James’s Park and the Mall, rather than a moderately prosperous seaport, for in and out of the houses along the front came perfumed Georgian dandies with their “clouded” canes and snuff-boxes in hand, to stroll along the Esplanade, where in sedan chairs stately Court ladies, rouged, patched, and crinolined, took the air attended by gallants in the gay and bright attire of the period. To Weymouth from all the district round, the country folk flocked to gaze and stare at the quality with wondering eyes, much as they would have gone to see any other sight or raree-show. The King took to bathing, and the Royal machine was, we are told, “a right Royal cumbersome and elaborate affair, and many folk daily come into the town to see His Majesty and the Court bathing in the sea-water half a furlong out from the shore. And some days the crowd be so great on the sands that people are pushed into the water against their will.” One suspects that few types of men can from time to time have afforded Royalty more amusement of a quiet sort than provincial mayors. At all events, a Mayor of Weymouth, during one of the visits of King George to the town, was destined to afford “comic relief” to a ceremony of some importance.