Although seen as a villain by the Americans because of injustices suffered by the colonists, he was a faithful husband and father, a popular monarch who loved his people and mingled with them freely, a patron of music and collector of books (Samuel Johnson was once invited to peruse his splendid library and was treated with a friendly conversation with the king), and above all a devout Christian. Unlike the first two Hanover kings or his profligate son George IV, his private life was sober and decent. According to David L. Edwards, he even refused to live at Kensington Palace and Hampton Court because he felt his predecessors had disgraced them. He had no use for some of the popular liberal clergy of his day, but he had a great admiration for George Whitefield, John Wesley and the Countess of Huntingdon. Unfortunately, a long period of insanity toward the end of his life, during which the Prince Regent’s immoral escapades became a major public scandal, eroded the respect for the monarchy which George III had built earlier.