Firstly, remember that there was no universal opinion in Britain at the time - many people supported the Amercian rebellion. As well as prominent Whig politicians like Charles James Fox, David Hartley, Thomas Brand Hollis, Sir George Savile, John Wiles and Edmund Burke, many ordinary people showed support as well.
Groups like the pro-Amercian London Association approved an anti-war petition to be presented to the government, though this was shelved.
There were also dissenting clergymen such as Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, Francis Blackburn, John Jebb and John Horne Tooke, who reportedly made the anonymous charge in a London Newspaper that Americans has been "inhumanely murdered". The Reverend Richard Price released a pamphlet called, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, And the justice And Policy of the War with America.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1781
This sold over 60,000 copies.
The British Press was the freest in the world at the time and those printed in London had the largest readership. Solomon Lutnick performed a study of attitudes in the British Press.
He found that the Morning Chronicle, the London Advertiser, the Courant and Westminster Chronicle were against the government, and the London Gazette, the General Evening Post and Lloyd's Evening Post were supporters. Such devisions were replicated in the provincial press.
Colin Bonwick's English Radicals and the American Revolution provides further insight.
Much of this was driven by Englightenment ideals, popular amongst the coffee houses of the time, but there was also a decline in trade during the war. In 1779 English exports were the lowest since 1745. With trade so vital to Britain at the time, there was a hope that the end of the war would allow for peaceful trading relations. In fact, despite losing its trading monopoly, Britain's level of trade quickly restored to pre-war levels.
Samuel Johnson, the prominent Tory writer of one of the most influencial dictionaries in history, in his anti-rebellion pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny of 1772, forsaw the possibility of losing the American colonies, but hoped that in this case, trade would still be possible:
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
But let us interrupt awhile this dream of conquest, settlement, and supremacy. Let us remember, that being to contend, according to one orator, with three millions of whigs, and, according to another, with ninety thousand patriots of Massachusett's bay, we may possibly be checked in our career of reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon equal terms, or driven from the western continent, and forbidden to violate, a second time, the happy borders of the land of liberty...
If we are allowed, upon our defeat, to stipulate conditions, I hope the treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the confederated cantons such products as they do not raise, and such manufactures as they do not make, and cannot buy cheaper from other nations, paying, like others, the appointed customs; that, if an English ship salutes a fort with four guns, it shall be answered, at least, with two; and that, if an Englishman be inclined to hold a plantation, he shall only take an oath of allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while he lives inoffensively, to retain his own opinion of English rights, unmolested in his conscience by an oath of abjuration.
http://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html
After the war was lost, there was definitely a feeling of immediate reconciliation. In this cartoon of 1782:
It expresses the idea of America as the daughter reconciling with her mother, Britainnia while other nations try to pull them apart.
After the war, the pro-Grovernment press tended to concern itself with two issues: the money that Americans had borrowed from British merchants before the revolution, and the property that state governments seized from Loyalist exiles after independence. There were also criticisms of the weakness of the American government under the Articles of Confederation when it was seen as being impossible to negotiate treaties with a Congress which did not yet have the power to enforce them.
Overall then, those that supported American Indpendence were pleased that the North Administration had lost, and those that supported the government, whilst critical of the new country, wished for normalised peaceful trading relations as soon as possible.
Interestingly, though it doesn't directly answer your question, the British people were presented images of Cornwallis surrendering his sword to General Washington. A painting by John Trumbull of the same name hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol
However Cornwallis didn't actually meet Washington and surrender. On October 19, 1781 he called in sick and sent his aide-de-camp Charles O’Hara with the sword. Washington refused to take it and sent his aide, General Benjamin Lincoln, to collect it.
So to some extent, the British people were presented a lie in this case. Cornwallis did not behave honorably according to protocol.
Source: Ferling's "Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence"
In fact, in spite of behaving dishonorably at the surrender of Yorktown, Cornwallis did not go down in shame and ignominy. The king still favored him and the new Prime Minister, William Pitt, held him in esteem. He was made a Knight Companion of The Most Noble Order of the Garter in 1786.
To add to the question, I learned in high school history class that the English actually organized Betting poles in which they gambled on when the the post- revolution United States would collapse (apparently done somewhat prolifically). Is this supported by any scholarly or academic sources?
Wow! Thanks to all the submissions! Just a couple more questions:
Were people angry they lost, or was it just a "whatever, good for them" kind of ordeal?
What happened in the trade industry after the war? Did the newly founded America have trouble importing and exporting materials?
