BRITISH MONARCHY AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS

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 Ј10 a year, and occupiers of land worth Ј10 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 risquй 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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