The Act transferred almost all civil list revenues (mainly customs and excise) to Parliament. In the last year of George II's reign these had been worth £876,988. In return, the new king received a fixed, annual civil list of £800,000.[1] Under George II the economy had grown and consequently the revenues increased. The fixed amount George III received was therefore a reduction in the Civil List.[1]
If the previous arrangement had been retained, George III's civil list in 1777 would have been more than £1,000,000 and would have amounted to £1,812,308 in 1798.[1] The £800,000 stipulated in the Act was soon found to be inadequate and a civil list crisis was only averted in the early 1760s because George II had built up savings worth £172,000 that George III was able to draw on.[2] By the end of the decade the civil list arrears amounted to more than half a million pounds and the king had to apply to Parliament to pay it off.[3]
Reitan, E. A. (1966). "The Civil List in Eighteenth-Century British Politics: Parliamentary Supremacy versus the Independence of the Crown". The Historical Journal. 9 (3). Cambridge University Press: 318-337. JSTOR2637984.
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