British Monarchy and its influence upon governmental institutions
VICTORIA (1837-1901)
Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, London, on 24
May 1819. She was the only daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of
George III. Her father died shortly after her birth and she became heir to the
throne because the three uncles who were ahead of her in succession - George
IV, Frederick Duke of York, and William IV - had no legitimate children who
survived. Warmhearted and lively, Victoria had a gift for drawing and painting;
educated by a governess at home, she was a natural diarist and kept a regular
journal throughout her life. On William IV's death in 1837, she became Queen at
the age of 18.
Queen Victoria is associated with Britain's great age
of industrial expansion, economic progress and - especially - empire. At her
death, it was said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.
In the early part of her reign, she was influenced by
two men: her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and her husband, Prince
Albert, whom she married in 1840. Both men taught her much about how to be a
ruler in a 'constitutional monarchy' where the monarch had very few powers but
could use much influence. Albert took an active interest in the arts, science,
trade and industry; the project for which he is best remembered was the Great
Exhibition of 1851, the profits from which helped to establish the South
Kensington museums complex in London.
Her marriage to Prince Albert brought nine children
between 1840 and 1857. Most of her children married into other royal families
of Europe: Edward VII (born 1841, married Alexandra, daughter of Christian IX
of Denmark); Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (born 1844,
married Marie of Russia); Arthur, Duke of Connaught (born 1850, married Louise
Margaret of Prussia); Leopold, Duke of Albany (born 1853, married Helen of
Waldeck-Pyrmont); Victoria, Princess Royal (born 1840, married Friedrich III,
German Emperor); Alice (born 1843, married Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and
by Rhine); Helena (born 1846, married Christian of Schleswig-Holstein); Louise
(born 1848, married John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll); Beatrice (born 1857,
married Henry of Battenberg). Victoria bought Osborne House (later presented to
the nation by Edward VII) on the Isle of Wight as a family home in 1845, and
Albert bought Balmoral in 1852.
Victoria was deeply attached to her husband and she
sank into depression after he died, aged 42, in 1861. She had lost a devoted
husband and her principal trusted adviser in affairs of state. For the rest of
her reign she wore black. Until the late 1860s she rarely appeared in public;
although she never neglected her official Correspondence, and continued to give
audiences to her ministers and official visitors, she was reluctant to resume a
full public life. She was persuaded to open Parliament in person in 1866 and
1867, but she was widely criticised for living in seclusion and quite a strong
republican movement developed. (Seven attempts were made on Victoria's life,
between 1840 and 1882 - her courageous attitude towards these attacks greatly
strengthened her popularity.) With time, the private urgings of her family and
the flattering attention of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister in 1868 and from
1874 to 1880, the Queen gradually resumed her public duties.
In foreign policy, the Queen's influence during the
middle years of her reign was generally used to support peace and reconciliation.
In 1864, Victoria pressed her ministers not to intervene in the
Prussia-Austria-Denmark war, and her letter to the German Emperor (whose son
had married her daughter) in 1875 helped to avert a second Franco-German war.
On the Eastern Question in the 1870s - the issue of Britain's policy towards
the declining Turkish Empire in Europe - Victoria (unlike Gladstone) believed
that Britain, while pressing for necessary reforms, ought to uphold Turkish
hegemony as a bulwark of stability against Russia, and maintain bi-partisanship
at a time when Britain could be involved in war.
Victoria's popularity grew with the increasing
imperial sentiment from the 1870s onwards. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the
government of India was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown
with the position of Governor General upgraded to Viceroy, and in 1877 Victoria
became Empress of India under the Royal Titles Act passed by Disraeli's
government.
During Victoria's long reign, direct political power
moved away from the sovereign. A series of Acts broadened the social and
economic base of the electorate. These acts included the Second Reform Act of
1867; the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872, which made it impossible
to pressurise voters by bribery or intimidation; and the Representation of the
Peoples Act of 1884 - all householders and lodgers in accommodation worth at
least £10 a year, and occupiers of land worth £10 a year, were
entitled to vote.
Despite this decline in the Sovereign's power,
Victoria showed that a monarch who had a high level of prestige and who was
prepared to master the details of political life could exert an important
influence. This was demonstrated by her mediation between the Commons and the
Lords, during the acrimonious passing of the Irish Church Disestablishment Act
of 1869 and the 1884 Reform Act. It was during Victoria's reign that the modern
idea of the constitutional monarch, whose role was to remain above political
parties, began to evolve. But Victoria herself was not always non-partisan and
she took the opportunity to give her opinions - sometimes very forcefully - in
private.
After the Second Reform Act of 1867, and the growth of
the two-party (Liberal and Conservative) system, the Queen's room for manoeuvre
decreased. Her freedom to choose which individual should occupy the premiership
was increasingly restricted. In 1880, she tried, unsuccessfully, to stop
William Gladstone - whom she disliked as much as she admired Disraeli and whose
policies she distrusted - from becoming Prime Minister. She much preferred the
Marquess of Hartington, another statesman from the Liberal party which had just
won the general election. She did not get her way. She was a very strong
supporter of Empire, which brought her closer both to Disraeli and to the
Marquess of Salisbury, her last Prime Minister. Although conservative in some
respects - like many at the time she opposed giving women the vote - on social
issues, she tended to favour measures to improve the lot of the poor, such as
the Royal Commission on housing. She also supported many charities involved in
education, hospitals and other areas.
Victoria and her family travelled and were seen on an
unprecedented scale, thanks to transport improvements and other technical
changes such as the spread of newspapers and the invention of photography.
Victoria was the first reigning monarch to use trains - she made her first
train journey in 1842.
In her later years, she almost became the symbol of
the British Empire. Both the Golden (1887) and the Diamond (1897) Jubilees,
held to celebrate the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the queen's accession,
were marked with great displays and public ceremonies. On both occasions,
Colonial Conferences attended by the Prime Ministers of the self-governing colonies
were held.
Despite her advanced age, Victoria continued her
duties to the end - including an official visit to Dublin in 1900. The Boer War
in South Africa overshadowed the end of her reign. As in the Crimean War nearly
half a century earlier, Victoria reviewed her troops and visited hospitals; she
remained undaunted by British reverses during the campaign: 'We are not
interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.'
Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight,
on 22 January 1901 after a reign which lasted almost 64 years, the longest in
British history. She was buried at Windsor beside Prince Albert, in the
Frogmore Royal Mausoleum, which she had built for their final resting place.
Above the Mausoleum door are inscribed Victoria's words: 'farewell best
beloved, here at last I shall rest with thee, with thee in Christ I shall rise
again'.
SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA
The name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came to the British Royal
Family in 1840 with the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert, son
of Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. Queen Victoria herself
remained a member of the House of Hanover.
The only British monarch of the House of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was King Edward VII, who reigned for nine years at the
beginning of the modern age in the early years of the 20th century. King George
V replaced the German-sounding title with that of Windsor during the First
World War. The name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha survived in other European monarchies,
including the current Belgian Royal Family and the former monarchies of
Portugal and Bulgaria.
SAXE-COBURG
AND GOTHA
1837 - 1917
THE WINDSORS
1917 – PRESENT
DAY
VICTORIA = m. Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg & Gotha
(1837-1910) (Prince
Consort)
EDWARD VII = m. Princess Alexandra, dau.
of CHRISTIAN IX, King of
(1910 – 1936) Denmark
DUKE OF
WINDSOR GEORGE VI = m. Lady Elizabeth
EDWARD
VIII 1936-1952 Bowes-Lyon,
dau. of Earl of
(abdicated
1936) Strathmore
and Kinghorne
(Queen Elizabeth
The
Queen Mother)
QUEEN
ELIZABETH II
(1952 – present day)
EDWARD VII (1901-10)
Edward VII, born November 9, 1841, was the eldest son
of Queen Victoria. He took the family name of his father, Prince Consort
Albert, hence the change in lineage, although he was still Hanoverian on his
mother's side. He married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, who bore him
three sons and three daughters. Edward died on May 6, 1910, after a series of
heart attacks.
Victoria, true to the Hanoverian name, saw the worst
in Edward. She and Albert imposed a strict regime upon Edward, who proved
resistant and resentful throughout his youth. His marriage at age twenty-two to
Alexandra afforded him some relief from his mother's domination, but even after
Albert's death in 1863, Victoria consistently denied her son any official
governmental role. Edward rebelled by completely indulging himself in women,
food, drink, gambling, sport and travel. Alexandra turned a blind eye to his
extramarital activities, which continued well into his sixties and found him
implicated in several divorce cases.
Edward succeeded the throne upon Victoria's death;
despite his risqué reputation, Edward threw himself into his role of
king with vitality. His extensive European travels gave him a solid foundation
as an ambassador in foreign relations. Quite a few of the royal houses of Europe
were his relatives, allowing him to actively assist in foreign policy
negotiations. He also maintained an active social life, and his penchant for
flamboyant accouterments set trends among the fashionable. Victoria's fears
proved wrong: Edward's forays into foreign policy had direct bearing on the
alliances between Great Britain and both France and Russia, and aside from his
sexual indiscretions, his manner and style endeared him to the English
populace.
Social legislation was the focus of Parliament during
Edward's reign. The 1902 Education Act provided subsidized secondary education,
and the Liberal government passed a series of acts benefiting children after
1906; old age pensions were established in 1908. The 1909 Labour Exchanges Act
laid the groundwork for national health insurance, which led to a
constitutional crisis over the means of budgeting such social legislation. The
budget set forth by David Lloyd-George proposed major tax increases on wealthy
landowners and was defeated in Parliament. Prime Minister Asquith appealed to
Edward to create several new peerages to swing the vote, but Edward steadfastly
refused. Edward died amidst the budgetary crisis at age sixty-eight, which was
resolved the following year by the Liberal government's passage of the act.
Despite Edward's colorful personal life and Victoria's
perceptions of him as profligate, Edward ruled peacefully (aside from the Boer
War of 1899-1902) and successfully during his short reign, which is remarkable
considering the shifts in European power that occurred in the first decade of
the twentieth century.
THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR
The House of Windsor came into being in 1917, when the
name was adopted as the British Royal Family's official name by a proclamation
of King George V, replacing the historic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It remains
the family name of the current Royal Family.
During the twentieth century, kings and queens of the
United Kingdom have fulfilled the varied duties of constitutional monarchy. One
of their most important roles was national figureheads lifting public morale
during the devastating world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45.
The period saw the modernization of the monarchy in
tandem with the many social changes which have taken place over the past 80
years. One such modernization has been the use of mass communication
technologies to make the Royal Family accessible to a broader public the world
over. George V adopted the new relatively new medium of radio to broadcast
across the Empire at Christmas; the Coronation ceremony was broadcast on
television for the first time in 1953, at The Queen's insistence; and the World
Wide Web has been used for the past five years to provide a global audience
with information about the Royal Family. During this period British monarchs
have also played a vital part in promoting international relations, retaining
ties with former colonies in their role as Head of the Commonwealth.
GEORGE V (1910-36)
George V was born June 3, 1865, the second son of
Edward VII and Alexandra. His early education was somewhat insignificant as
compared to that of the heir apparent, his older brother Albert. George chose
the career of professional naval officer and served competently until Albert
died in 1892, upon which George assumed the role of the heir apparent. He
married Mary of Teck (affectionately called May) in 1893, who bore him four
sons and one daughter. He died the year after his silver jubilee after a series
of debilitating attacks of bronchitis, on January 20, 1936.
George ascended the throne in the midst of a
constitutional crisis: the budget controversy of 1910. Tories in the House of
Lords were at odds with Liberals in the Commons pushing for social reforms.
When George agreed to create enough Liberal peerages to pass the measure the
Lords capitulated and gave up the power of absolute veto, resolving the problem
officially with passage of the Parliament Bill in 1911. The first World War
broke out in 1914, during which George and May made several visits to the
front; on one such visit, George's horse rolled on top of him, breaking his
pelvis - George remained in pain for the rest of his life from the injury. The
worldwide depression of 1929-1931 deeply affected England, prompting the king
to persuade the heads of the three political parties (Labour, Conservative and
Liberal) to unite into a coalition government. By the end of the 1920's, George
and the Windsors were but one of few royal families who retained their status
in Europe.
The relationship between England and the rest of the
Empire underwent several changes. An independent Irish Parliament was
established in 1918 after the Sinn Fein uprising in 1916, and the Government of
Ireland Act (1920) divided Ireland along religious lines. Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and South Africa demanded the right of self-governance after the
war, resulting in the creation of the British Commonwealth of Nations by the
Statute of Westminster in 1931. India was accorded some degree of
self-determination with the Government of India Act in 1935.
The nature of the monarchy evolved through the
influence of George. In contrast to his grandmother and father - Victoria's
ambition to exert political influence in the tradition of Elizabeth I and
Edward VII's aspirations to manipulate the destiny of nations - George's royal
perspective was considerably more humble. He strove to embody those qualities,
which the nation saw as their greatest strengths: diligence, dignity and duty.
The monarchy transformed from an institution of constitutional legality to the
bulwark of traditional values and customs (particularly those concerning the
family). Robert Lacey describes George as such: ". . . as his official
biographer felt compelled to admit, King George V was distinguished 'by no
exercise of social gifts, by no personal magnetism, by no intellectual powers.
He was neither a wit nor a brilliant raconteur, neither well-read nor
well-educated, and he made no great contribution to enlightened social
converse. He lacked intellectual curiosity and only late in life acquired some
measure of artistic taste.' He was, in other words, exactly like most of his
subjects. He discovered a new job for modern kings and queens to do -
representation."
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