Transilvania University of Brasov

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature

Department of Romanian-English

The Monarchy in Great Britain

Senior Lecturer Ph. D.: Oana PÎRNUŢĂ Student: Cristina ALEXANDRU-MAN

Brasov 2013
 Content

Introduction

Abstract

Key words

I. The Monarchy

-Royal Family

II. London: the Capital of the UK

III. The institutions of UK

- Parliament
a. House of Lords
b. House of Commons
- Government
a. Local Government

IV. Religion

V. Conclusions

Bibliography
Abstract: The paper represents a study about a function of the Monarchy. This paper contains a
some general information about the role of the Queen in UK, the function of its Institutions. Also
a very important subject that is discussed in this paper the relationship between English people
and Church. Few of us know precisely what is involved in the Queen’s unique role as sovereign
and Head of the Commonwealth. What is she aiming achieve and how does she set about trying
to fulfill such a demanding role?

Key words:

Monarchy
Queen
London
Royal Family
Parliament
Religion
Government
 Introduction

‘When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne on February 1952, Winston Churchill was Prime
Minister and Harry S. Truman was the American President. In Britain tea, sugar, butter, cooking
fats and sweets were still rationed. The new cinema releases of 1952 included The Lavender Hill
Mob, High Noon and Singing in the Rain. The bank rate was raised from 2% to 4%. There were
no motorways, computers, supermarkets or frozen food. It was the first year in which sale of
television sets overtook radios, though there was only one (black and white) channel. The BBC
was the only broadcasting authority. There was no hi-fi, no video and no colour supplements.
Most of today’s British citizens were not yes born.’ ( Antony Jay , 1992:6)

I. The Monarchy :

‘The monarchy is regarded as having a key role in maintaining political stability. Its
continuity has been interrupter only one (the republic of 1649) in over thousand years. Today
the Queen is not only the head of state, but also an important symbol of national unity. The royal
title in Britain is: “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace Of God of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realmes and Territories Queen, Head of the
Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”. In law the Queen is head of the executive, an integral
part of the legislature, head of the judiciary, the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces of
the Crown and the “supreme governor” of the established Church of England. As a result of a
long process of evolution, during which the monarchy’s absolute power has been progressively
reduced, the Queen is impartial in political affairs and acts on the advice of her
minister.’(Reference Service, Central Office of Information, 1994:12).

‘A family on the throne, observed Walter Bagehot, in one of those honeyed phrases which
may mean more or less than they seem, “is an interesting idea.” Indeed, it is. But during the past
two hundred years of British royal history, it is an idea which has embodied itself in two very
different human forms. The first vision, which has generally been preponderant, has been the
happy “family on the throne”. Think of George III and Charlotte, with their large, playful,
gurgling brood, immortalized in Zoffany’s delightful conversation pieces. Think of Victoria and
Albert, happily ensconced at Osborne, all gemütlich and Christmas trees, with Landseer and
Winterhalter conveniently to hand with their paints and brushes.’ (David Cannadine, 2000:3)

‘At first glance, it might seem paradoxical for Britain’s kings and queens, the inheritors
of one of the most stable and magnificent thrones on earth, to project an image of monarchy
which has often been deliberately bourgeois and literally non-majestic.(…) During the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when homely, suburban, middle-class values were
increasingly thought to be in the ascendant, it seemed altogether appropriate that the monarch
should both reflect and embody them. At the same time, the crown was losing its traditional,
public, masculine functions of warriorking and low-giver, and one of the ways in which it
resourcefully reinvent itself was by projecting an image of exemplary domesticity and marital
fidelity which matched and mirrored its evolving constitutional impartiality. All this made it easy
to elide the royal family into the national family” (David Cannadine, 2000:3-4)

‘Thus understood, the morality of British royalty has swung back and forth across the
generations, and it is only by chance that the happy family model has usually predominated over
the dysfunctional. Consider these alternative possibilities, any one of which might easily have
come to pass. If George III had died younger or gone mad sooner, his sons would have had much
greater opportunities to enjoy and consolidate their debauched and self-indulgent idea of
monarchy’ (David Cannadine, 2000:5)

‘Since then, a great deal has changed. Britain is no longer the great power, or the great
Empire, it was one hundred or even fifty years ago. But in other ways, very little (too little) has
changed: for Britain still has a great-power monarchy, with imperial pretensions, both in terms of
the ways the thing works, and the attitudes of the people who work it. Inevitably, this means that
the dominant theme of the present queen’s reign has been the growing credibility gap which has
been opening up between the late Victorian monarchy Britain still has, and the post-Victorian
nation Britain has been becoming.’ (David Cannadine, 2000:9)
‘Of all the memorable phrase that have beep minted and mobilized to describe modern British
royalty, “constitutional Monarchy” is virtually the only one which seems to have been neither
anticipated nor invented by Walter Bagehot.’ (David Cannadine, 2000:19)

II. The institutions of UK

- Parliament

‘If, however, policy-making was still a matter for the Crown and for those ministers who
had the royal confidence, the money to carry it out was provided by the voted of the Commons.
It is true that the Civil List provided the King with a revenue for routine expenditure. But the
money required for the upkeep of the army and the navy, and for any extraordinary expenditure,
had to be granted by Parliament, which is practice meant the House of Commons. One of the
great problems of eighteenth-century ministers therefore was to harmonize the views of the
sovereign on foreign policy with the prejudices of that House. This fact provides one of the main
clues to the behavior of politicians throughout the century, but particularly before 1760, when
public opinions was highly suspicious of the royal attachment to Hanover. The dilemma that
faced them was clear. If they failed to get supplies to give substance to the royal policy they were
of no use to the king’ (Dorothy Marshall, 1962:51)
 ‘The size of the electoral roll was as important as its nature. It might seem that a borough
is which every man paid scot and lot was less likely to fall under the control of a patron than one
in which the right was attached to certain burgages. This depended, however, largely on the
number of the residents so qualified. The idea that even in these borough, enjoyed this privilege:
the growing suburbs were usually excluded.’ (Dorothy Marshall, 1962:56)

a. House of Lords
b. House of Commons

‘parliament (French “speaking”) legislative body of a country. Parliament is the supreme

British legislative body, comprising the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The
origins of Parliament are in the 13th century, usually dated from 1265, but its powers were not
established until the late 17th century. The powers of the Lords were curtailed 1911, and the
duration of parliaments was fixed at five years, but any parliament may extend its own life, as
happened during both worlds wars. The UK Parliament meets in the Palace of Westminster,
London.
Parliament originated under the Norman kings as the Great Council of royal tenants-in-
chief, to which in the 13th century representatives of the shires were sometimes summoned. The
Parliament summoned by Simon de Montfort 1265 (as head of government in the Barons’ War)
set a precedent by including representatives of the boroughs as well as the shires. Under Edward
III the burgesses and knights of the shires began to meet separately from the barons, thus
forming the House of Commons.
By the 15th century Parliament had acquired the right to legislate, vote, and appropriate
supplies examine public accounts, and impeach royal ministers. The powers of Parliament were
much diminished under the Yorkists and Tudors but under Elizabeth I a new spirit of
independence appeared. The revolutions of 1640 and 1688 established parliamentary control
over the executive and judiciary, and finally abolished all royal claim to tax or legislate without
parliamentary consent. During these struggles the two great parties (Whig and Tory) emerged,
and after 1688 it became a costumary for the sovereign to choose ministers from the party
dominant in the Commons. The English Parliament was united with the Scottish 1707, and with
the Irish 1801-1922. The franchise was extended to the middle classes 1832, to the urban
working classes 1867, to agricultural labourers 1884, and to women 1918 and 1928. The duration
of parliaments was fixed at three years 1694, at seven 1716, and at five 1911. Payment of MPs
was introduced 1911. A public bill that has been passed is an act of Parliament.’ (The
Hutchinson, 1995:253).
 - Government
b. Local Government

‘The Government is formed by the party with majority support in the Commons. The
Queen appoints its leader as Prime Minister. As head of the Government the Prime
Minister appoints about 100 ministers, of whom about 20 are in the Cabinet – the senior
group which takes major policy decisions.’(Reference Service, Central Office of
Information: 1994, 15)

‘local government that part of government dealing mainly with matters concerning the
inhabitants of a particular area or town, usually financed at least in part by local taxes.
The system of local government in England developed haphazardly; in the 18th century it
varied in the towns between democratic survivals of the guild system and the narrow rule of
small oligarschies. The Municipal Reform Act 1835 established the rule of elected councils,
although their actual powers remained small. In country areas local government remained in the
hand of the justices of the peace (JPs) assembled in quarter sessions, until the Local Government
Act 1888 established country councils. These were given a measure of control over the internal
local authorities, except the major bodies, which were constituted as country boroughs. The
Local Government Act 1894 set up urban and rural district councils and, in the rural districts
only, parish councils.’ (The Hutchinson, 1995:212)

III. London: the Capital of the UK

‘London capital of England and the United Kingdom, on the river Thames; its
metropolitan area, Greater London, has an area of 1,580 sq km/610 sq mi. the City of London,
known as the “square mile”, are 274 hectares/677 acres, is the financial and commercial center of
the UK. Greater London from 1965 comprises the City of London and 32 boroughs. Popular
tourist attractions include the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, Beckingham Palace, and
Westminster Abbey. (…) The City of London has been governed by a corporation from the 12 th
century. Its structure and the electoral procedures for its common councilors and aldermen are
medievally complex, and it is headed by the lord mayor (who is, broadly speaking, nominated by
the former and elected annually by the latter). After being sworn in at the Guildhall, he or she is
presented the next day to the lord chief justice at the Royal Courts of Justice in Westminster, and
the Lord Mayor’s Show is a ceremonial procession there in November.’ (The Hutchinson,
1995:213).
 IV. Religion

‘SHORTLY AFTER THE END OF THE Second World Was, Mass Observation (1947)
conducted a study of popular attitudes to religion in an unspecified London borough. It was
concluded that:

Not more than one person in ten…is at all closely associated with any of the churches,
and about two-thirds never or practically never go to Church. The majority, however – four out
of five women and two out of three men – give at least verbal assent to the possibility of there
being a God, and most of the rest express doubt rather than disbelief. Uncompromising
disbelievers in a Deity amount to about one in twenty.

The somewhat negative tone with which this quotation opens illustrates the widespread
perception of the twentieth century as a period in which religion became marginal to everyday
life. However, almost any other activity that attracted the committed involvement of up to a tenth
of the population, the passive sympathy of two-thirds to four-fifths of a sample, and was totally
rejected by only one-twentieth of respondents, would be regarded as a successful and influential
historical force. Thus we confront immediately the problem of how to interpret the evidence
regarding the place of religion in the life of people of Britain during the decades after 1936:
should we dwell on how far the “tide of faith” had gone out, or concentrate our attention tather
on how much water remained in the sea?’ (Francesca Carnevali and Julie-marie Strange,
2007:323).
 V. Conclusion

‘Empire, the British various territories all over the world conquered or colonized by Britain
from about 1600, most new independent or ruled by other power; the British Empire was at its
largest at the end of World War I, consisting of over 25% of the world’s population and area.
The Commonwealth is composed of former and remaining territories of the British Empire.
The British Empire lasted more than three and a half centuries – almost as long as the
Roman Empire. By the time the British began colonizing overseas, the Portuguese and Spaniards
had already divided a considerable part of the earth’s land surface between them.
The first successful British colony was Jamestown, Virginia, in North America,
founded 1607, although there was an earlier settlement at Newfoundland 1583. The Empire grew
comparatively quickly, initially with acquisitions in North America and India, as well as some
marginal settlement in Africa, in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 19th century saw the largest
expansion of the Empire as the British took many former French possessions in the West Indies
and begun to settle in numbers in Australia in the early part of the century and later competed
fiercely with other European powers for territory in Africa. At the same time, there was serious
expansions in Asia, notably the acquisition of Singapore (1824), Hong Kong (1841), and
Burma(1886), and the South Pacific, particularly the settlement of New Zealand (1840). The
Hutchinson, 1995:120-121).
Bibliography

1. Cannadine D. (2000), History in Our Time, London : Penguin Books

2. Carnevali F. & Strange J.-M., (2007), Second Edition – 20th Century, Great Britain:
Pearson Longman
3. Jay A. (1992) , Elizabeth – The Role of The Monarchy Today ,London: BCA
4. Marshall D. (1962), Eighteenth Century England , Singapore: Longman
5. Reference Service, Central Office of Information(1994), Britain At a Glance, London:
London:H M S O
6. The Hutchinson(1995), Illustrated Encyclopedia of British History, Great Britain:
Helicon