Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the wife of King George VI and the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. She was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from her husband's accession in 1936 until his death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, she was the last Empress of India. Born into a family of British nobility, she came to prominence in 1923 when she married the Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary; the couple and their daughters embodied traditional ideas of public service. She undertook a variety of public engagements and became known for her cheerful countenance. In 1936, her husband unexpectedly became king when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in order to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth became queen, she accompanied her husband on diplomatic tours to France and North America before the start of the Second World War.
During the war, her indomitable spirit provided moral support to the British public. After the war, her husband's health deteriorated and she was widowed at the age of 51, her elder daughter, aged 25, became the new queen. From the death of Queen Mary in 1953, Elizabeth was viewed as the matriarch of the British royal family. In her years, she was a popular member of the family when other members were suffering from low levels of public approval, she continued an active public life until just a few months before her death at the age of 101 years, 238 days, seven weeks after the death of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret. Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the youngest daughter and the ninth of ten children of Claude Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis, his wife, Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck, her mother was descended from British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, Governor-General of India Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, the elder brother of another Prime Minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.
The location of her birth remains uncertain, but reputedly she was born either in her parents' Westminster home at Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, or in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to a hospital. Other possible locations include Forbes House in Ham, the home of her maternal grandmother, Louisa Scott, her birth was registered at Hitchin, near the Strathmores' English country house, St Paul's Walden Bury, given as her birthplace in the census the following year. She was christened there on 23 September 1900, in the local parish church, All Saints, her godparents included her paternal aunt Lady Maud Bowes-Lyon and cousin Venetia James, she spent much of her childhood at St Paul's Walden and at Glamis Castle, the Earl's ancestral home in Scotland. She was educated at home by a governess until the age of eight, was fond of field sports and dogs; when she started school in London, she astonished her teachers by precociously beginning an essay with two Greek words from Xenophon's Anabasis.
Her best subjects were scripture. After returning to private education under a German Jewish governess, Käthe Kübler, she passed the Oxford Local Examination with distinction at age thirteen. On her fourteenth birthday, Britain declared war on Germany. Four of her brothers served in the army, her elder brother, Fergus, an officer in the Black Watch Regiment, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Another brother, was reported missing in action on 28 April 1917. Three weeks the family discovered he had been captured after being wounded, he remained in a prisoner of war camp for the rest of the war. Glamis was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, she was instrumental in organising the rescue of the castle's contents during a serious fire on 16 September 1916. One of the soldiers she treated wrote in her autograph book that she was to be "Hung, drawn, & quartered... Hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, quartered in the best house in the land." Prince Albert, Duke of York—"Bertie" to the family—was the second son of King George V.
He proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think and act as I feel I ought to". When he declared he would marry no other, his mother, Queen Mary, visited Glamis to see for herself the girl who had stolen her son's heart, she became convinced that Elizabeth was "the one girl who could make Bertie happy", but refused to interfere. At the same time, Elizabeth was courted by James Stuart, Albert's equerry, until he left the Prince's service for a better-paid job in the American oil business. In February 1922, Elizabeth was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert's sister, Princess Mary, to Viscount Lascelles; the following month, Albert proposed again. In January 1923, Elizabeth agreed to marry Albert, despite her misgivings about royal life. Albert's freedom in choosing Elizabeth, not a member of a royal family, though the daughter of a peer, was considered a gesture in favour of political modernisation, they selected a platinum engagement ring featuring a Kashmir sapphire with two diamonds adorning its sides.
They married on 26 April 1923, at Westminster Abbey. Unexpectedly, Elizabeth laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on her way into the Abbey, in memory of her brother Fergus. Elizabeth became styled Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York. Following a
Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom
The Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom the Crown Jewels of England, are 140 royal ceremonial objects kept in the Tower of London, which include the regalia and vestments worn by British kings and queens at their coronations. Symbols of 800 years of monarchy, the coronation regalia are the only working set in Europe – other present-day monarchies have abandoned coronations in favour of secular ceremonies – and the collection is the most complete of any regalia in the world. Objects used to invest and crown the monarch variously denote his or her roles as head of state, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, head of the British armed forces, they feature heraldic devices and national emblems of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, recent pieces were designed to reflect the monarch's role as Head of the Commonwealth. Use of regalia by monarchs in England can be traced back to when it was converted to Christianity in the Middle Ages. A permanent set of coronation regalia, once belonging to Edward the Confessor, was established after he was made a saint in the 12th century.
They were holy relics kept at Westminster Abbey – venue of coronations since 1066. Another set was used at State Openings of Parliament. Collectively, these objects came to be known as the Jewels of the Crown. Most of the present collection dates from around 350 years ago; the medieval and Tudor regalia had been sold or melted down after the monarchy was abolished in 1649 during the English Civil War. Only four original items pre-date the Restoration: a late 12th-century anointing spoon and three early 17th-century swords. Upon the Acts of Union 1707, the English Crown Jewels were adopted by British monarchs; the regalia contain 23,578 stones, among them Cullinan I, the largest clear cut diamond in the world, set in the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross. It was cut from the largest gem-quality rough diamond found, the Cullinan, discovered in South Africa in 1905 and presented to Edward VII. On the Imperial State Crown are Cullinan II, the Stuart Sapphire, St Edward's Sapphire, the Black Prince's Ruby – a large spinel given to Edward the Black Prince by a Spanish king in 1367.
The Koh-i-Noor diamond from India, was acquired by Queen Victoria and has featured on three consort crowns. A small number of historical objects at the Tower set with glass and crystals. At a coronation the monarch is anointed using holy oil poured from an ampulla into the spoon, invested with robes and ornaments, crowned with St Edward's Crown. Afterwards, it is exchanged for the lighter Imperial State Crown, usually worn at State Openings of Parliament. Wives of kings are invested with a plainer set of regalia, since 1831 a new crown has been made specially for each queen consort. Regarded as Crown Jewels are state swords, ceremonial maces, church plate, historical regalia, banqueting plate, royal christening fonts, they are part of the Royal Collection and belong to the institution of monarchy, passing from one sovereign to the next. When not in use the Jewels are on public display in the Jewel House and Martin Tower where they are seen by 2.5 million visitors every year. The earliest known use of a crown in Britain was discovered by archaeologists in 1988 in Deal and dates to between 200 and 150 BC.
A sword, ceremonial shield, decorated bronze crown with a single arch, which sat directly on the head of its wearer, were found inside the tomb of the Mill Hill Warrior. At this point, crowns were symbols of authority worn by military leaders. Priests continued to use crowns following the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD. A dig in a field at Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk, in 1957 revealed a bronze crown with two arches and depictions of male faces, dating from the period of Roman occupation. By the early 5th century, the Romans had withdrawn from Britain, the Angles and the Saxons settled. A heptarchy of new kingdoms began to emerge. One of the methods used by regional kings to solidify their authority over their territories was the use of ceremony and insignia; the tomb of an unknown king – evidence suggests it may be Rædwald of East Anglia – at Sutton Hoo provides insight into the regalia of a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon king. Inside the early 7th-century tomb discovered in 1939 was found the ornate Sutton Hoo helmet, comprising an iron cap, a neck guard, a face mask, decorated with images of animals and warriors in copper-alloy and set with garnets.
He was buried with a heavy whetstone sceptre, on top of, an iron ring surmounted by the figure of a stag. In 597, a Benedictine monk had been sent by Pope Gregory I to start converting Pagan England to Christianity; the monk, became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Within two centuries, the ritual of anointing monarchs with holy oil and crowning them in a Christian ceremony had been established, regalia took on a religious identity. There was still no permanent set of coronation regalia. In 9th-century Europe, gold crowns in the Byzantine tradition were replacing bronze, gold soon became the standard material for English royal crowns.Æthelstan ascended the throne in 924 and united the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to form the Kingdom of England. In the earliest known depiction of an English king wearing a crown, he is shown presenting a copy of Bede's Life of St Cuthbert to the saint himself; until his reign, kings had been portrayed on coins wearing
East India Company
The East India Company known as the Honourable East India Company or the British East India Company and informally as John Company, Company Bahadur, or The Company, was an English and British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region with Mughal India and the East Indies, with Qing China; the company ended up seizing control over large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia, colonised Hong Kong after a war with Qing China. Chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade in basic commodities including cotton, indigo dye, spices, saltpetre and opium; the company ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. In his speech to the House of Commons in July 1833, Lord Macaulay explained that since the beginning, the East India company had always been involved in both trade and politics, just as its French and Dutch counterparts had been.
The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, coming late to trade in the Indies. Before them the Portuguese Estado da Índia had traded there for much of the 16th century and the first of half a dozen Dutch Companies sailed to trade there from 1595; these Dutch companies amalgamated in March 1602 into the United East Indies Company, which introduced the first permanent joint stock from 1612. By contrast, wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the EIC's shares; the government owned no shares and had only indirect control until 1657 when permanent joint stock was established. During its first century of operation, the focus of the company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the French East India Company during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s; the battles of Plassey and Buxar, in which the British defeated the Bengali powers, left the company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India.
In the following decades it increased the extent of the territories under its control, controlling the majority of the Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force by its Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian sepoys. By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army, with Indian revenues of £13,464,561, expenses of £14,017,473; the company came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company rule in India began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown's assuming direct control of the Indian subcontinent in the form of the new British Raj. Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances, it was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by rendered it vestigial and obsolete.
The official government machinery of British India assumed the East India Company's governmental functions and absorbed its navy and its armies in 1858. Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the captured Spanish and Portuguese ships with their cargoes enabled English voyagers to travel the globe in search of riches. London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean; the aim was to deliver a decisive blow to the Portuguese monopoly of Far Eastern Trade. Elizabeth granted her permission and on 10 April 1591 James Lancaster in the Bonaventure with two other ships sailed from Torbay around the Cape of Good Hope to the Arabian Sea on one of the earliest English overseas Indian expeditions. Having sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula, they preyed on Spanish and Portuguese ships there before returning to England in 1594; the biggest capture that galvanised English trade was the seizure of the large Portuguese Carrack, the Madre de Deus by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Cumberland at the Battle of Flores on 13 August 1592.
When she was brought in to Dartmouth she was the largest vessel, seen in England and her cargo consisted of chests filled with jewels, gold, silver coins, cloth, pepper, cinnamon, benjamin, red dye and ebony. Valuable was the ship's rutter containing vital information on the China and Japan trades; these riches aroused the English to engage in this opulent commerce. In 1596, three more English ships were all lost at sea. A year however saw the arrival of Ralph Fitch, an adventurer merchant who, along with his companions, had made a remarkable fifteen-year overland journey to Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Fitch was consulted on the Indian affairs and gave more valuable information to Lancaster. On 22 September 1599, a group of merchants met and stated their intention "to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies, the sums that they will adventure", committing £30
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire; the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained numerous vassal states; some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians; the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy and military throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires; the Ottomans suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. During this time, atrocities were committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks; the Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy; the word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman.
Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān. In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı Devleti; the Turkish word for "Ottoman" referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker, not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī, or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia; the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character; as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I, a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River.
It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their
Second Anglo-Sikh War
The Second Anglo-Sikh War was a military conflict between the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company that took place in 1848 and 1849. It resulted in the fall of the Sikh Empire, the annexation of the Punjab and what subsequently became the North-West Frontier Province, by the East India Company. On April 19, 1848 Patrick Vans Agnew of the civil service and Lieutenant William Anderson of the Bombay European regiment, having been sent to take charge of Multan from Diwan Mulraj, were murdered there, within a short time the Sikh troops joined in open rebellion. Governor-General of India Lord Dalhousie agreed with Sir Hugh Gough, the commander-in-chief, that the British East India Company's military forces were neither adequately equipped with transport and supplies, nor otherwise prepared to take the field immediately, he foresaw the spread of the rebellion, the necessity that must arise, not for the capture of Multan, but for the entire subjugation of the Punjab. He therefore resolutely delayed to strike, organized a strong army for operations in November, himself proceeded to the Punjab.
Despite the brilliant successes gained by Herbert Edwardes in the Second Anglo-Sikh War with Mulraj, Gough's indecisive victories at Ramnagar in November, at Sadulapur in December, at the Battle of Chillianwala on January 13, 1849, the stubborn resistance at Multan showed that the task required the utmost resources of the government. At length, on January 22, the Multan fortress was taken by General Whish, thus set at liberty to join Gough at Gujarat. Here a complete victory was won on the February 21 at the Battle of Gujrat, the Sikh army reveller stop fighting at Rawalpindi, their Afghan allies were chased out of India. After the victory at Gujarat, Lord Dalhousie annexed the Punjab for the East India Company in 1849. For his services the Earl of Dalhousie received the thanks of the British parliament and a step in the peerage, as marquess; the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab was consolidated and expanded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh during the early years of the nineteenth century. During the same period, the British East India Company's territories had been expanded until they were adjacent to the Punjab.
Ranjit Singh maintained an uneasy alliance with the East India Company, while increasing the military strength of the Sikh Khalsa Army, which saw itself as the embodiment of the state and religion, to deter British aggression against his state and to expand Sikh territory to the north and north west, capturing territory from Afghanistan and Kashmir. When Ranjit Singh died in 1839, the Sikh Empire began to fall into disorder. There was a succession of short-lived rulers at the central Durbar, increasing tension between the Army and the Durbar; the East India Company began to build up its military strength on the borders of the Punjab. The increasing tension goaded the Sikh Army to invade British territory, under weak and treacherous leaders; the hard-fought First Anglo-Sikh War ended in defeat for the Sikh Army. At the end of the war, the Sikh Empire was forced to cede some valuable territory to the East India Company, Gulab Singh, the ruler of Jammu, was allowed to acquire entire Jammu and Kashmir from the Sikh Empire by a large cash payment to the East India Company.
Some of the Sikh Army were forced to make an expedition to oust the Governor of Kashmir in favour of Gulab Singh. The infant Maharaja Duleep Singh of the Sikh Empire was allowed to retain his throne, but a British Resident, Sir Henry Lawrence, controlled the policy of the Durbar. Duleep Singh's mother, Maharani Jind Kaur, continually tried to regain some of her former influence as Regent and was exiled by Lawrence. While some Sikh generals and courtiers welcomed her dismissal, others resented Lawrence's action; some of the Sikh Army had to be kept in being, since many predominantly Muslim areas of the Sikh Empire threatened to ally with Dost Mohammed Khan in Afghanistan or to lapse into disorder, only force of arms could keep them in subjugation. The British were unwilling to incur the financial and manpower costs of using large numbers of British or Bengal Army units for this task. To the contrary, the Governor-General of India, Viscount Hardinge sought to make economies after the war by reducing the size of the Bengal Army by 50,000 men.
The Sardars of the Sikh Army resented carrying out the orders of comparatively junior British officers and administrators. Early in 1848, Sir Henry Lawrence, ill, departed on leave to England. Although it was assumed that his younger brother John Lawrence would be appointed in his place, Lord Dalhousie, who had replaced Lord Hardinge as Governor-General, appointed Sir Frederick Currie instead. Currie was a legalist, based in Calcutta, unfamiliar with military matters and with the Punjab. While the Lawrences were comparatively informal and familiar with the junior officers who were Residents and Agents in the various districts of the Punjab, Currie was stiffer in manner and was inclined to treat his subordinates' reports with caution. In particular, he refused to act on reports from James Abbott, the Political Agent in Hazara, convinced that Sardar Chattar Singh Attariwalla, the Sikh Governor of Hazara, was plotting a rebellion with other Sirdars; the city of Multan was part of the Sikh kingdom, having been captured by Ranjit Singh in 1818.
In 1848, it was governed by Dewan Mulraj. After the end of the First Anglo-Sikh war, Mulraj had behaved independently; when he was required by the British-controlled Durbar in Lahore to pay an increased tax assessment and revenues which were in arrears, Mulraj attempted to give up power to his son, so as to maintain his family's position as rulers. Currie instead imposed
The Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their sub-divisions. Ill-defined, the term has different meanings depending on context, it is used to designate the monarch in either a personal capacity, as Head of the Commonwealth, or as the king or queen of his or her realms. It can refer to the rule of law. A corporation sole, the Crown is the legal embodiment of executive and judicial governance in the monarchy of each country; these monarchies are united by the personal union of their monarch. The concept of the Crown developed first in England as a separation of the literal crown and property of the kingdom from the person and personal property of the monarch, it spread through English and British colonisation and is now rooted in the legal lexicon of the United Kingdom, its Crown dependencies, the other 15 independent realms. It is not to be confused with any physical crown, such as those of the British regalia; the term is found in various expressions such as "Crown land", which some countries refer to as "public land" or "state land".
The concept of the Crown took form under the feudal system. Though not used this way in all countries that had this system, in England, all rights and privileges were bestowed by the ruler. Land, for instance, was granted by the Crown to lords in exchange for feudal services and they, in turn, granted the land to lesser lords. One exception to this was common socage—owners of land held as socage held it subject only to the Crown; when such lands become owner-less they are said to escheat. Bona vacantia is the royal prerogative; the monarch is the living embodiment of the Crown and, as such, is regarded as the personification of the state. The body of the reigning sovereign thus holds two distinct personas in constant coexistence: that of a natural-born human being and that of the state as accorded to him or her through law; the terms the state, the Crown, the Crown in Right of, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of, similar are all synonymous and the monarch's legal personality is sometimes referred to as the relevant jurisdiction's name.
As such, the king or queen is the employer of all government officials and staff, the guardian of foster children, as well as the owner of all state lands and equipment, state owned companies, the copyright for government publications. This is all in his or her position as sovereign, not as an individual; the Crown represents the legal embodiment of executive and judicial governance. While the Crown's legal personality is regarded as a corporation sole, it can, at least for some purposes, be described as a corporation aggregate headed by the monarch. Whilst the Crown refers to the monarch, this reference is made in re the monarch this reference is to the monarch in their capacity as monarch, does not refer to that individual in their totality of ownership interests and actions; the monarch can act in a private capacity. This duality of characterisation can be illustrated in several ways. In property ownership for example, although both are royal residences, Buckingham Palace is the property of the Crown via the Crown Estate whilst Balmoral Castle is the property of Elizabeth II and not of the Crown.
The latter property can be alienated by the Queen, whereas any disposition of the former property would need to be done via instrument of government as an act of state. The Queen's bank accounts at Coutts contain components of her private wealth only, whilst the resources of the monarch acting as the Crown are dispensed from HM Treasury and the Crown Estate to the Royal Household. A third example is in employment relationships; however those who assist as employees of the monarch as the Crown do so on employment from the Royal Household, the official department charged with supporting the monarch. Those who a
Tower of London
The Tower of London Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill, it was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new ruling elite; the castle was used as a prison from 1100 until 1952, although, not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence; as a whole, the Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were several phases of expansion under Kings Richard I, Henry III, Edward I in the 12th and 13th centuries; the general layout established by the late 13th century remains despite activity on the site.
The Tower of London has played a prominent role in English history. It was besieged several times, controlling it has been important to controlling the country; the Tower has served variously as an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public record office, the home of the Crown Jewels of England. From the early 14th century until the reign of Charles II, a procession would be led from the Tower to Westminster Abbey on the coronation of a monarch. In the absence of the monarch, the Constable of the Tower is in charge of the castle; this was a trusted position in the medieval period. In the late 15th century, the castle was the prison of the Princes in the Tower. Under the Tudors, the Tower became used less as a royal residence, despite attempts to refortify and repair the castle, its defences lagged behind developments to deal with artillery; the peak period of the castle's use as a prison was the 16th and 17th centuries, when many figures who had fallen into disgrace, such as Elizabeth I before she became queen, Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth Throckmorton, were held within its walls.
This use has led to the phrase "sent to the Tower". Despite its enduring reputation as a place of torture and death, popularised by 16th-century religious propagandists and 19th-century writers, only seven people were executed within the Tower before the World Wars of the 20th century. Executions were more held on the notorious Tower Hill to the north of the castle, with 112 occurring there over a 400-year period. In the latter half of the 19th century, institutions such as the Royal Mint moved out of the castle to other locations, leaving many buildings empty. Anthony Salvin and John Taylor took the opportunity to restore the Tower to what was felt to be its medieval appearance, clearing out many of the vacant post-medieval structures. In the First and Second World Wars, the Tower was again used as a prison and witnessed the executions of 12 men for espionage. After the Second World War, damage caused during the Blitz was repaired, the castle reopened to the public. Today, the Tower of London is one of the country's most popular tourist attractions.
Under the ceremonial charge of the Constable of the Tower, operated by the Resident Governor of the Tower of London and Keeper of the Jewel House, the property is cared for by the charity Historic Royal Palaces and is protected as a World Heritage Site. The Tower was orientated with its strongest and most impressive defences overlooking Saxon London, which archaeologist Alan Vince suggests was deliberate, it stood out to traffic on the River Thames. The castle enclosures; the innermost ward is the earliest phase of the castle. Encircling it to the north and west is the inner ward, built during the reign of Richard I. There is the outer ward which encompasses the castle and was built under Edward I. Although there were several phases of expansion after William the Conqueror founded the Tower of London, the general layout has remained the same since Edward I completed his rebuild in 1285; the castle encloses an area of 12 acres with a further 6 acres around the Tower of London constituting the Tower Liberties – land under the direct influence of the castle and cleared for military reasons.
The precursor of the Liberties was laid out in the 13th century when Henry III ordered that a strip of land adjacent to the castle be kept clear. Despite popular fiction, the Tower of London never had a permanent torture chamber, although the basement of the White Tower housed a rack in periods. Tower Wharf was built on the bank of the Thames under Edward I and was expanded to its current size during the reign of Richard II; the White Tower is a keep, the strongest structure in a medieval castle, contained lodgings suitable for the lord – in this case, the king or his representative. According to military historian Allen Brown, "The great tower was by virtue of its strength and lordly accommodation, the donjon par excellence"; as one of the largest keeps in the Christian world, the White Tower has been described as "the most complete eleventh-century palace in Europe". The White Tower, not including its projecting corner towers, measures 36 by 32 metres at the base, is 27 m high at the southern battlements.
The structure was three storeys high, comprising a basement floor, an entrance level, an upper floor. The entrance, as is usual in Norman keeps, was above ground
