1.
Order of the Garter
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The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry and the third most prestigious honour in England and the United Kingdom. It is dedicated to the image and arms of Saint George and it is awarded at the Sovereigns pleasure as a personal gift on recipients from the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. Membership of the Order is limited to the Sovereign, the Prince of Wales, the order also includes supernumerary knights and ladies. New appointments to the Order of the Garter are always announced on St Georges Day, the orders emblem is a garter with the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense in gold lettering. Members of the wear it on ceremonial occasions. King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter around the time of his claim to the French throne, the list includes Sir Sanchet DAbrichecourt, who died on 20 October 1345. Other dates from 1344 to 1351 have also been proposed, the Kings wardrobe account shows Garter habits first issued in the autumn of 1348. Also, its original statutes required that member of the Order already be a knight. The earliest written mention of the Order is found in Tirant lo Blanch and it was first published in 1490. This book devotes a chapter to the description of the origin of the Order of the Garter, at the time of its foundation, the Order consisted of King Edward III, together with 25 Founder Knights, listed in ascending order of stall number in St.1431. Various legends account for the origin of the Order, the most popular legend involves the Countess of Salisbury, whose garter is said to have slipped from her leg while she was dancing at a court ball at Calais. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and returned it to her, exclaiming, Honi soit qui mal y pense, King Edward supposedly recalled the event in the 14th century when he founded the Order. This story is recounted in a letter to the Annual Register in 1774, The motto in fact refers to Edwards claim to the French throne, the use of the garter as an emblem may have derived from straps used to fasten armour. Medieval scholars have pointed to a connection between the Order of the Garter and the Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in Gawain, a girdle, very similar in its erotic undertones to the garter, plays a prominent role. A rough version of the Orders motto also appears in the text and it translates from Old French as Accursed be a cowardly and covetous heart. While the author of that poem remains disputed, there seems to be a connection between two of the top candidates and the Order of the Garter. Scholar J. P. Oakden has suggested that it is related to John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and, more importantly. Another competing theory is that the work was written for Enguerrand de Coucy, the Sire de Coucy was married to King Edward IIIs daughter, Isabella, and was given admittance to the Order of the Garter on their wedding day
2.
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
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Her Majestys Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians, who are present or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, the Council also holds the delegated authority to issue Orders of Council, mostly used to regulate certain public institutions. The Council advises the sovereign on the issuing of Royal Charters, which are used to grant special status to incorporated bodies, otherwise, the Privy Councils powers have now been largely replaced by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. The Judicial Committee consists of judges appointed as Privy Counsellors, predominantly Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Privy Council of the United Kingdom was preceded by the Privy Council of Scotland, the key events in the formation of the modern Privy Council are given below, Witenagemot was an early equivalent to the Privy Council of England. During the reigns of the Norman monarchs, the English Crown was advised by a court or curia regis. The body originally concerned itself with advising the sovereign on legislation, administration, later, different bodies assuming distinct functions evolved from the court. The courts of law took over the business of dispensing justice, nevertheless, the Council retained the power to hear legal disputes, either in the first instance or on appeal. Furthermore, laws made by the sovereign on the advice of the Council, powerful sovereigns often used the body to circumvent the Courts and Parliament. During Henry VIIIs reign, the sovereign, on the advice of the Council, was allowed to enact laws by mere proclamation, the legislative pre-eminence of Parliament was not restored until after Henry VIIIs death. Though the royal Council retained legislative and judicial responsibilities, it became an administrative body. The Council consisted of forty members in 1553, but the sovereign relied on a smaller committee, by the end of the English Civil War, the monarchy, House of Lords, and Privy Council had been abolished. The remaining parliamentary chamber, the House of Commons, instituted a Council of State to execute laws, the forty-one members of the Council were elected by the House of Commons, the body was headed by Oliver Cromwell, de facto military dictator of the nation. In 1653, however, Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the Council was reduced to thirteen and twenty-one members, all elected by the Commons. In 1657, the Commons granted Cromwell even greater powers, some of which were reminiscent of those enjoyed by monarchs, the Council became known as the Protectors Privy Council, its members were appointed by the Lord Protector, subject to Parliaments approval. In 1659, shortly before the restoration of the monarchy, the Protectors Council was abolished, Charles II restored the Royal Privy Council, but he, like previous Stuart monarchs, chose to rely on a small group of advisers. Under George I even more power transferred to this committee and it now began to meet in the absence of the sovereign, communicating its decisions to him after the fact. Thus, the British Privy Council, as a whole, ceased to be a body of important confidential advisers to the sovereign and it is closely related to the word private, and derives from the French word privé
3.
Fellow of the Royal Society
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As of 2016, there are around 1600 living Fellows, Foreign and Honorary Members. Fellowship of the Royal Society has been described by The Guardian newspaper as “the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar” with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows, honorary and foreign members are elected annually usually in May, each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FRS, see Category, Fellows of the Royal Society and Category, Female Fellows of the Royal Society. Every year, Fellows elect up to ten new Foreign Members, like Fellows, Foreign Members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science. As of 2016 there are around 165 Foreign Members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS, see Category, Foreign Members of the Royal Society. Honorary Fellows include Bill Bryson, Melvyn Bragg, Robin Saxby, David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, Honorary Fellows are entitled to use the post nominal letters HonFRS. Others including John Maddox, Patrick Moore and Lisa Jardine were elected as honorary fellows, statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include David Attenborough and John Palmer, prime Ministers of the United Kingdom such as Margaret Thatcher, Neville Chamberlain, H. H. Asquith were elected under statute 12, see Category, Fellows of the Royal Society. The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British Royal Family for election as Royal Fellows of the Royal Society. As of 2016 there are five royal fellows, Charles, Prince of Wales, Anne, Princess Royal, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Andrew, Duke of York. Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II is not a Royal Fellow, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow. The election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination, each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society, who sign a certificate of proposal. Previously, nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, the certificate of election includes a statement of the principal grounds on which the proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates is confirmed by the Council in April, a candidate is elected if he or she secures two-thirds of votes of those Fellows present and voting. A further maximum of six can be ‘Honorary’, ‘General’ or ‘Royal’ Fellows, nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by sectional committees, each with fifteen members and a chair
4.
Queen Victoria
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Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
5.
Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby
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He was known before 1834 as Edward Stanley, and from 1834 to 1851 as Lord Stanley. He is one of only four British Prime Ministers to have three or more separate periods in office, however his ministries all lasted less than two years, and totalled 3 years 280 days. Historian Frances Walsh says it was, Derby who educated the party and acted as its strategist to pass the last great Whig measure, the 1867 Reform Act. It was his greatest achievement to create the modern Conservative Party in the framework of the Whig constitution, Stanley was born to Lord Stanley and his wife, Charlotte Margaret née Hornby, the daughter of the Reverend Geoffrey Hornby. The Stanleys were a long-established and very wealthy landowning family whose residence was Knowsley Hall in Lancashire. Stanley was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1822 Edward Stanley, as he was then, was elected to Parliament in the rotten borough of Stockbridge as a Whig, the traditional party of his family. In 1824, however, he alienated his Whig colleagues by voting against Joseph Humes motion for an investigation into the Established Protestant Church of Ireland. When the Whigs returned to power in 1830, Stanley became Chief Secretary for Ireland in Lord Greys Government, as Chief Secretary Stanley pursued a series of coercive measures which frequently brought him into conflict with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Anglesey. In 1833, Stanley moved up to the important position of Secretary of State for War. Stanley, a conservative Whig, broke with the ministry over the reform of the Church of Ireland in 1834, the term Derby Dilly was coined by Irish Nationalist leader Daniel OConnell. Joining the Conservatives, Stanley again served as Colonial Secretary in Sir Robert Peels second government in 1841, in 1844 he was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Stanley of Bickerstaffe in his fathers Barony of Stanley by Writ of Acceleration. He broke with the Prime Minister again in 1845, this time over the repeal of the Corn Laws and he thereafter led the protectionist faction of the Conservative Party. In 1851 he succeeded his father as Earl of Derby, the party system was in a state of flux when the Conservatives left office in 1846, the outstanding issues being the question of Ireland and the unresolved franchise. The protectionists had a core of leaders, of whom Disraeli was a leading light, but in opposition the party was still in-fighting, although Disraeli was determined to heal rifts. Derby formed a minority Government in February 1852 following the collapse of Lord John Russells Whig Government, in this new ministry, Benjamin Disraeli would be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. With many senior Conservative ministers having followed Peel, Derby was forced to appoint many new men to office – of the Cabinet only three were pre-existing Privy Counsellors. When the aged Duke of Wellington, by then very deaf, heard the list of inexperienced Cabinet Ministers being read aloud in the House of Lords, from then this government would be known as the Who. Traditionally Derbys ministries were thought in hindsight to have been dominated by Disraeli, however recent research suggests that this was not always the case, especially in the governments conduct of foreign policy
6.
Benjamin Disraeli
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Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS was a British politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies. Disraeli is remembered for his voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone. He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and he is the only British Prime Minister of Jewish birth. Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, then part of Middlesex and his father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue, young Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837, in 1846 the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the Commons, Disraeli became a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s and he also forged a bitter rivalry with Gladstone of the Liberal Party. Upon Derbys retirement in 1868, Disraeli became Prime Minister briefly before losing that years election and he returned to opposition, before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 election. He maintained a friendship with Queen Victoria, who in 1876 created him Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraelis second term was dominated by the Eastern Question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire, Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company. This diplomatic victory over Russia established Disraeli as one of Europes leading statesmen, World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support and he angered British farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a speaking campaign, his Liberals bested Disraelis Conservatives in the 1880 election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in opposition and he had throughout his career written novels, beginning in 1826, and he published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76. Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 Kings Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London, the child and eldest son of Isaac DIsraeli, a literary critic and historian. The family was of Sephardic Jewish Italian mercantile background, All Disraelis grandparents and great grandparents were born in Italy, Isaacs father, Benjamin, moved to England from Venice in 1748. Disraelis siblings were Sarah, Naphtali, Ralph, and James and he was close to his sister, and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers
7.
George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon
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George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon KG GCB PC, was an English diplomat and statesman from the Villiers family. Villiers was born in London, the son of the Honourable George Villiers and he went up to Cambridge at the early age of sixteen and entered St Johns College on 29 June 1816. In 1820, as the eldest son of a brother with royal descent. In the same year, he was appointed attaché to the British embassy at Saint Petersburg, there he remained three years, and gained that practical knowledge of diplomacy which was of so much use to him in later life. He had received from nature a singularly handsome person, a polished and engaging address, a command of languages. Upon his return to England in 1823, he was appointed to a commissionership of customs, in 1831, he was despatched to France to negotiate a commercial treaty, which however was fruitless. On 16 August 1833, he was appointed minister at the court of Spain, Don Carlos, the late kings brother, claimed the crown by virtue of the Salic law of the House of Bourbon which Ferdinand had renounced before the birth of his daughter. Isabella II and her mother Christina, the regent, became the representatives of constitutional monarchy. For six years Villiers continued to give the most active and intelligent support to the Liberal government of Spain. He was accused, though unjustly, of having favoured the revolution of La Granja, which drove Christina, the mother, out of the kingdom. Slavery was intended to be illegal in Spanish colonies from 1820, Villiers worked with the help of the Times correspondent David Turnbull to get slavery removed from Spanish colonies. In 1835 the Spanish reaffirmed their commitments, for this reason, upon the formation of Lord John Russells first administration, Lord Clarendon accepted the office of President of the Board of Trade. Twice in his career the governor-generalship of India was offered him, and once the governor-generalship of Canada, but in 1847 a sense of duty compelled him to take a far more laborious and uncongenial appointment. The crisis was one of extraordinary peril, agrarian crimes of horrible atrocity had increased threefold. The Catholic clergy were openly disaffected, extraordinary measures were required to regulate the bounty of the government and the nation. Lord Clarendon remained viceroy of Ireland till 1852, upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The country was already drifting into the Crimean War, an expression of his own which was never forgotten, the tsar Nicholas had speculated on the impossibility of the sustained joint action of France and England in council and in the field. It was mainly by Lord Clarendon at Whitehall and by Lord Raglan before the Siege of Sevastopol that such a combination was rendered practicable, in 1856 Lord Clarendon took his seat at the congress of Paris convoked for the restoration of peace, as first British plenipotentiary
8.
Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville
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Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville KG PC FRS, styled Lord Leveson until 1846, was a British Liberal statesman from the Leveson-Gower family. He is best known for his stewardship of Britains external relations, 1870–74 and 1880–85, in co-operation with his best friend. Leveson-Gower was born in London, the eldest son of Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville, by Lady Harriet Cavendish, daughter of William Cavendish and he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. Leveson-Gower went to Paris for a time under his father. For a short time he was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord Melbournes ministry, from 1841 till his fathers death in 1846, when he succeeded to the title, he sat for Lichfield. In the House of Lords he distinguished himself as a Free Trader and he became Vice-President of the Board of Trade in 1848, and took a prominent part in promoting the Great Exhibition of 1851. Under Lord Palmerston he was president of the council. From 1855 Lord Granville led the Liberals in the Upper House and he went in 1856 as head of the British mission to the tsars coronation in Moscow. He received a degree from Cambridge University in 1864. He retained his office when, on Palmerstons death in 1865, Lord Russell became prime minister, Granville, now an established Liberal leader, was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He also held shares in the Lilleshall Company, during the American Civil War, Granville was non-interventionist along with the majority of Palmerstons cabinet. His memorandum against intervention in September 1862 drew Prime Minister Palmerstons attention, from 1866 to 1868 he was in opposition, but in December 1868 he became Colonial Secretary in Gladstones first ministry. His tact was invaluable to the government in carrying the Irish Church, on 27 June 1870, on Lord Clarendons death, he became foreign secretary. Lord Granvilles name is associated with his career as foreign secretary. His Gladstonian foreign policy based on patience, peace, and no alliances kept Britain free from European wars, in putting British-American relations up to the world as a model for how to resolve disputes peacefully, Granville helped create a breakthrough in international relations. Russia took advantage of the situation to denounce the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris, when the Conservatives came into power in 1874, his part for the next six years was to criticise Disraelis spirited foreign policy, and to defend his own more pliant methods. He returned to the office in 1880, only to find an anti-British spirit developing in German policy which the temporising methods of the Liberal leaders were generally powerless to deal with. Lord Granville failed to realise in time the importance of the Angra Pequena question in 1883–1884 and he went into Colonial Office service for six months, and in July 1886 retired from public life
9.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
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He was the last prime minister to head his full administration from the House of Lords. In 1868 upon the death of his father, Cecil was elevated to the House of Lords and he became prime minister in June 1885 when the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone resigned, and held the office until January 1886. When Gladstone came out in favour of Home Rule for Ireland, Salisbury opposed him and formed an alliance with the breakaway Liberal Unionists and he died a year later, in 1903. Historians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs, Paul Smith characterises his personality as deeply neurotic, depressive, agitated, introverted, fearful of change and loss of control, and self-effacing but capable of extraordinary competitiveness. A representative of the aristocracy, he held the reactionary credo, Whatever happens will be for the worse. Lord Robert Cecil was the son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury. He was a descendant of Lord Burghley and the 1st Earl of Salisbury. The family owned vast rural estates in Hertfordshire and Dorset and this wealth increased sharply in 1821, when he married the rich heiress of a merchant prince who had bought up large estates in Essex and Lancashire. Robert had a childhood, with few friends, he filled his time with reading. He was bullied unmercifully at the schools he attended, in 1840, he went to Eton College, where he did well in French, German, Classics, and Theology, however, he left in 1845 because of intense bullying. The unhappy schooling shaped his outlook on life and his negative views on democracy. He decided that most people were cowardly and cruel, and that the mob would run roughshod over sensitive individuals, in December 1847 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received an honorary fourth class in mathematics conferred by noblemans privilege due to ill health. Whilst at Oxford he found the Oxford movement or Tractarianism to be an intoxicating force, in April 1850 he joined Lincolns Inn but subsequently did not enjoy law. His doctor advised him to travel for his health, and so in July 1851 to May 1853 Cecil travelled through Cape Colony, Australia, including Tasmania, and New Zealand. He found the Kaffirs a fine set of men – whose language bears traces of a very high former civilisation and they were an intellectual race, with great firmness and fixedness of will but horribly immoral as they lacked theism. In the Bendigo goldmine of Australia, he claimed there is not half as much crime or insubordination as there would be in an English town of the same wealth. Ten thousand miners were policed by four men armed with carbines, a Maori chief offered Cecil five acres near Auckland, which he declined. He entered the House of Commons as a Conservative on 22 August 1853 and he retained this seat until entering the peerage and it was not contested during his time as its representative
10.
British people
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British people, or Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown dependencies, and their descendants. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, although early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the creation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness was forged during the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and the First French Empire, and developed further during the Victorian era, because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists. Modern Britons are descended mainly from the ethnic groups that settled in the British Isles in and before the 11th century, Prehistoric, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse. The British are a diverse, multi-national and multicultural society, with regional accents, expressions. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them, the group included Ireland, which was referred to as Ierne inhabited by the different race of Hiberni, and Britain as insula Albionum, island of the Albions. The term Pritani may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands. Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the Priteni, the origin of the Latin word Britanni. It has been suggested that name derives from a Gaulish description translated as people of the forms. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a name for the British Isles. However, the term Britannia persisted as the Latin name for the island, during the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term British was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people. At that time, it was the held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the ancient Britons. This notion was supported by such as the Historia Regum Britanniae. Wales and Cornwall, and north, i. e. Cumbria, Strathclyde and this legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The indigenous people of the British Isles have a combination of Celtic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, oppenheimer continues that the majority of the people of the British Isles share genetic commonalities with the Basques, ranging from highs of 90% in Wales to lows of 66% in East Anglia. Oppenheimers opinion is that. by far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia, ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales. The English had been unified under a single state in 937 by King Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh. However, historian Simon Schama suggested that it was Edward I of England who was responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood in the 13th century
11.
Conservative Party (UK)
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The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently the party, having won a majority of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election. The partys leader, Theresa May, is serving as Prime Minister. It is the largest party in government with 8,702 councillors. The Conservative Party is one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, the other being its modern rival. The Conservative Partys platform involves support for market capitalism, free enterprise, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defence, deregulation. In the 1920s, the Liberal vote greatly diminished and the Labour Party became the Conservatives main rivals, Conservative Prime Ministers led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century, including Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Thatchers tenure led to wide-ranging economic liberalisation, the Conservative Partys domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to them being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservatives are the joint-second largest British party in the European Parliament, with twenty MEPs, the party is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe Europarty and the International Democrat Union. The party is the second-largest in the Scottish Parliament and the second-largest in the Welsh Assembly, the party is also organised in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The Conservative Party traces its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party and they were known as Independent Whigs, Friends of Mr Pitt, or Pittites. After Pitts death the term Tory came into use and this was an allusion to the Tories, a political grouping that had existed from 1678, but which had no organisational continuity with the Pittite party. From about 1812 on the name Tory was commonly used for the newer party, the term Conservative was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The name immediately caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto, the term Conservative Party rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. In 1912, the Liberal Unionists merged with the Conservative Party, in Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance had been formed in 1891 which merged anti-Home Rule Unionists into one political movement. Its MPs took the Conservative whip at Westminster, and in essence formed the Irish wing of the party until 1922. The Conservatives served with the Liberals in an all-party coalition government during World War I, keohane finds that the Conservatives were bitterly divided before 1914, especially on the issue of Irish Unionism and the experience of three consecutive election losses
12.
Alma mater
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Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university or college. In modern usage, it is a school or university which an individual has attended, the phrase is variously translated as nourishing mother, nursing mother, or fostering mother, suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Before its modern usage, Alma mater was a title in Latin for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele. The source of its current use is the motto, Alma Mater Studiorum, of the oldest university in continuous operation in the Western world and it is related to the term alumnus, denoting a university graduate, which literally means a nursling or one who is nourished. The phrase can also denote a song or hymn associated with a school, although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele, Venus, and other mother goddesses, it was not frequently used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. Alma Redemptoris Mater is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary, the earliest documented English use of the term to refer to a university is in 1600, when University of Cambridge printer John Legate began using an emblem for the universitys press. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is often cited in 1710, many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name. The University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has been called the Alma Mater of the Nation because of its ties to the founding of the United States. At Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses, outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
13.
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. With around 600 undergraduates,300 graduates, and over 180 fellows, by combined student numbers, it is second to Homerton College, Cambridge. Members of Trinity have won 32 Nobel Prizes out of the 91 won by members of Cambridge University, five Fields Medals in mathematics were won by members of the college and one Abel Prize was won. Other royal family members have studied there without obtaining degrees, including King Edward VII, King George VI, along with Christs, Jesus, Kings and St Johns colleges, it has also provided several of the well known members of the Apostles, an intellectual secret society. In 1848, Trinity hosted the meeting at which Cambridge undergraduates representing private schools such as Westminster drew up the first formal rules of football, Trinitys sister college in Oxford is Christ Church. Like that college, Trinity has been linked with Westminster School since the schools re-foundation in 1560, the college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, from the merger of two existing colleges, Michaelhouse, and Kings Hall. At the time, Henry had been seizing church lands from abbeys, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, being both religious institutions and quite rich, expected to be next in line. The King duly passed an Act of Parliament that allowed him to any college he wished. The universities used their contacts to plead with his sixth wife, the Queen persuaded her husband not to close them down, but to create a new college. The king did not want to use royal funds, so he combined two colleges and seven hostels to form Trinity. Contrary to popular belief, the lands granted by Henry VIII were not on their own sufficient to ensure Trinitys eventual rise. In its infancy Trinity had owed a great deal to its college of St Johns. Its first four Masters were educated at St Johns, and it took until around 1575 for the two colleges application numbers to draw even, a position in which they have remained since the Civil War. Bentley himself was notorious for the construction of a hugely expensive staircase in the Masters Lodge, most of the Trinitys major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Thomas Nevile, who became Master of Trinity in 1593, rebuilt and this work included the enlargement and completion of Great Court, and the construction of Neviles Court between Great Court and the river Cam. Neviles Court was completed in the late 17th century when the Wren Library, in the 20th century, Trinity College, St Johns College and Kings College were for decades the main recruiting grounds for the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. In 2011, the John Templeton Foundation awarded Trinity Colleges Master, Trinity is the richest Oxbridge college, with a landholding alone worth £800 million. Trinity is sometimes suggested to be the second, third or fourth wealthiest landowner in the UK – after the Crown Estate, the National Trust, in 2005, Trinitys annual rental income from its properties was reported to be in excess of £20 million
14.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established as a sovereign state on 1 January 1801 by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The growing desire for an Irish Republic led to the Irish War of Independence, Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, and the state was consequently renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain financed the European coalition that defeated France in 1815 in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire thereby became the foremost world power for the next century. The Crimean War with Russia and the Boer wars were relatively small operations in a largely peaceful century, rapid industrialisation that began in the decades prior to the states formation continued up until the mid-19th century. A devastating famine, exacerbated by government inaction in the century, led to demographic collapse in much of Ireland. It was an era of economic modernization and growth of industry, trade and finance. Outward migration was heavy to the colonies and to the United States. Britain also built up a large British Empire in Africa and Asia, India, by far the most important possession, saw a short-lived revolt in 1857. In foreign policy Britain favoured free trade, which enabled its financiers and merchants to operate successfully in many otherwise independent countries, as in South America. Britain formed no permanent military alliances until the early 20th century, when it began to cooperate with Japan, France and Russia, and moved closer to the United States. A brief period of limited independence for Ireland came to an end following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British governments fear of an independent Ireland siding against them with the French resulted in the decision to unite the two countries. This was brought about by legislation in the parliaments of both kingdoms and came into effect on 1 January 1801, however, King George III was bitterly opposed to any such Emancipation and succeeded in defeating his governments attempts to introduce it. When the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain agreed to return most of the territories it had seized, in May 1803, war was declared again. In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System and this policy aimed to eliminate the threat from the British by closing French-controlled territory to foreign trade. Frances population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the British Isles, Napoleon expected that cutting Britain off from the European mainland would end its economic hegemony. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent, after Napoleons surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned. The Allies united and the armies of Wellington and Blucher defeated Napoleon once, simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes, arming hostile Indians and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. The war was little noticed in Britain, which could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814, American frigates inflicted a series of defeats on the Royal Navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe
15.
Secretary of State for the Colonies
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The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet minister in charge of managing the United Kingdoms various colonial dependencies. The position was first created in 1768 to deal with the increasingly troublesome North American colonies, joint responsibility continued under the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but led to a diminution of the boards status and it became an adjunct to the new Secretarys Department. Following this, colonial duties given to the Home Secretary, then Lord Sydney, following the Treaty of Paris 1783, a new board, named the Committee of Council on Trade and Plantations was established under William Pitt the Younger, by an Order in Council in 1784. In the latter part of the century the United Kingdom also gained control over a number of territories with the status of protectorate. The ministerial responsibility for these territories was initially held by the Foreign Secretary, however, by the early years of the twentieth century the responsibility for each of these territories had been transferred to the Colonial Secretary as well. The League of Nations mandated territories acquired as a result of the Treaty of Versailles became a responsibility of the Colonial Office in the aftermath of the First World War. In 1925 part of the Colonial Office was separated out as the Dominions Office, the new office was responsible for dealing with the Dominions together with a small number of other territories. In the twenty years following the end of the Second World War, in 1968 the Commonwealth Office was subsumed into the Foreign Office, which was renamed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Colonial Secretary never had responsibility for the provinces and princely states of India, from 1768 until 1966 the Secretary of State was supported by an Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and latterly by a Minister of State
16.
Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby
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An avid sportsman, he built Stanley House Stables in England, and is famous in North America for presenting Canada with the Stanley Cup. Stanley was also one of the inductees of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Derby was the son of Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby. He was born in London and was educated at Eton and Sandhurst and he received a commission in the Grenadier Guards, rising to the rank of Captain. Derby left the army for politics, serving as a Conservative Member of Parliament, in government, he served as a Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Financial Secretary to the War Office, Secretary to the Treasury, War Secretary and Colonial Secretary. In 1886 he was created Baron Stanley of Preston, in the County Palatine of Lancaster and he served as President of the Board of Trade, remaining in that office until he was appointed Governor General of Canada. Stanley was appointed the Governor General of Canada and Commander in Chief of Prince Edward Island on 1 May 1888, during his term as Governor General, he travelled often and widely throughout the country. During his visit he dedicated Stanley Park, which is named after him and he also experienced the joys of fishing and avidly pursued the sport whenever his busy schedule allowed. When Sir John A. Macdonald died in office of heart failure on 6 June 1891 and he asked Sir John Abbott to take over as prime minister. Once the government was in place, Abbott resigned for health reasons, Derby helped cement the non-political role of the governor general when, in 1891, he refused to agree to a controversial motion in the House of Commons. The opposition to the bill was introduced by the provinces who were motivated by mistrust of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. Derby declined to interfere, citing the proposed disallowal as unconstitutional, in holding to this decision, he gained popularity by refusing to compromise the viceregal position of political neutrality. Derbys wife, whom Sir Wilfrid Laurier described as an able and witty woman, in 1891, she founded the Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses on Rideau Street, the first nursing school in Ottawa. She was also a fan of hockey games at the Rideau Rink. Derbys sons became avid ice hockey players in Canada, playing in amateur leagues in Ottawa, in 1892, Derby gave Canada a treasured national icon, the Stanley Cup. He originally donated the trophy as a cup for Canadas best amateur hockey club. Since 1926, only teams of the National Hockey League have competed for the trophy and this now famous cup bears Derbys name as tribute to his encouragement and love of outdoor life and sport in Canada. In recognition of this, Derby was inducted into the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945 in the Honoured Builders category, the original size of the Stanley Cup was 7 inches and is now around 36 inches and 35 pounds
17.
Eton College
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Eton College /iːtən/ is an English independent boarding school for boys in Eton, Berkshire, near Windsor. It educates more than 1,300 pupils, aged 13 to 18 years and it was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as The Kings College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor, making it the 18th oldest Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference school. Eton is one of the seven public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. Eton has educated 19 British prime ministers and generations of the aristocracy and has referred to as the chief nurse of Englands statesmen. The school is headed by a Provost and Fellows, who appoint the Head Master and it contains 25 boys houses, each headed by a housemaster, selected from the more senior members of the teaching staff, which numbers some 155. Almost all of the pupils go on to universities, about a third of them to Oxford or Cambridge. The Head Master is a member of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference, Eton has a long list of distinguished former pupils. David Cameron was the 19th British prime minister to have attended the school, about 20% of pupils at Eton receive financial support, through a range of bursaries and scholarships. In early 2014, this figure had risen to 263 pupils receiving the equivalent of around 60% of school fee assistance, Eton has been described as the most famous public school in the world, and been referred to as the chief nurse of Englands statesmen. The Good Schools Guide called the school the number one public school, adding that The teaching. The school is a member of the G20 Schools Group, Eton today is a larger school than it has been for much of its history. In 1678, there were 207 boys, in the late 18th century, there were about 300, while today, the total has risen to over 1,300. Eton College was founded by King Henry VI as a charity school to free education to 70 poor boys who would then go on to Kings College, Cambridge. Henry took Winchester College as his model, visiting on many occasions, borrowing its Statutes and removing its Headmaster, when Henry VI founded the school, he granted it a large number of endowments, including much valuable land. He persuaded the then Pope, Eugene IV, to grant him a privilege unparalleled anywhere in England, the school also came into possession of one of Englands Apocalypse manuscripts. Legend has it that Edwards mistress, Jane Shore, intervened on the schools behalf and she was able to save a good part of the school, although the royal bequest and the number of staff were much reduced. Construction of the chapel, originally intended to be slightly over twice as long, only the Quire of the intended building was completed. Etons first Headmaster, William Waynflete, founder of Magdalen College, Oxford and previously Head Master of Winchester College, as the school suffered reduced income while still under construction, the completion and further development of the school has since depended to some extent on wealthy benefactors
18.
Rugby School
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Rugby School is a day and boarding co-educational independent school in Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain and its re-establishment by Thomas Arnold during his time as Headmaster, from 1828 to 1841, was seen as the forerunner of the Victorian Public School. It is one of the original seven English Public Schools defined by the Public Schools Act 1868, total enrolment of day pupils from forms 4 to 12 numbers around 800. Rugby School was the birthplace of Rugby football, in 1845, three Rugby School pupils produced the first written rules of the Rugby style of game. Rugby School was founded in 1567 as a provision in the will of Lawrence Sheriff, since Lawrence Sheriff lived in Rugby and the neighbouring Brownsover, the school was intended to be a free grammar school for the boys of those towns. Up to 1667, the school remained in comparative obscurity, a final decision was handed down in 1667, confirming the findings of a commission in favour of the trust, and henceforth the school maintained a steady growth. Floreat Rugbeia is the school song. Pupils beginning Rugby in the F Block study various subjects and this is continued through to D block. The school then provides standard A-levels in 29 subjects, students at this stage have the choice of taking 3 or four subjects and are also offered the opportunity to take an extended project. The Governing Body provides financial benefits with school fees to families unable to afford them, parents of pupils who are given a Scholarship are capable of obtaining a 10% fee deduction, although more than one scholarship can be awarded to one student. Rugby School claim they aim to give more than education with their new tagline being The Whole Person. The school has three magazines, The Meteor, The Boomer and Quod, the core of the school was completed in 1815 and is built around the Old Quad, with its Georgian architecture. Especially notable rooms are the Upper Bench, the Old Hall of School House, Thomas Hughes once carved his name onto the hands of the school clock, situated on a tower above the Old Quad. By the twentieth century Rugby expanded and new buildings were inspired by this Edwardian Era. The Temple Speech Room, named after former headmaster and Archbishop of Canterbury Frederick Temple and now used for assemblies, speech days, concerts, musicals –. Oak-panelled walls boast the portraits of alumni, including Neville Chamberlain holding his piece of paper. Between the wars, the Memorial Chapel, the Music Schools and she wrote to John Vickers, the OFT director-general, saying, They are not a group of businessmen meeting behind closed doors to fix the price of their products to the disadvantage of the consumer. They are schools that have quite openly continued to follow a long-established practice because they were unaware that the law had changed, rugbys most famous headmaster was Thomas Arnold, appointed in 1828, he executed many reforms to the school curriculum and administration
19.
Cambridge Apostles
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The Cambridge Apostles is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar. The origin of the Apostles nickname dates from the number, twelve, membership consists largely of undergraduates, though there have been graduate student members, and members who already hold university and college posts. The society traditionally drew most of its members from Christs, St Johns, Jesus, Trinity, the society is essentially a discussion group. Meetings are held once a week, traditionally on Saturday evenings, during which one gives a prepared talk on a topic. The usual procedure was for members to meet at the rooms of those whose turn it was to present the topic, the host would provide refreshments consisting of coffee and sardines on toast, called whales. Women first gained acceptance into the society in the 1970s, the Apostles retain a leather diary of their membership stretching back to its founder, which includes handwritten notes about the topics on which each member has spoken. It was a point of honour that the question voted on should bear only a relationship to the matter debated. The members referred to as the Apostles are the active, usually undergraduate members, undergraduates apply to become angels after graduating or being awarded a fellowship. Every few years, amid great secrecy, all the angels are invited to an Apostles dinner at a Cambridge college, there used to be an annual dinner, usually held in London. Undergraduates being considered for membership are called embryos and are invited to embryo parties, the embryos attend these parties without knowing they are being considered for membership. Becoming an Apostle involves taking an oath of secrecy and listening to the reading of a curse, originally written by Apostle Fenton John Anthony Hort, former members have spoken of the lifelong bond they feel toward one another. Henry Sidgwick, the philosopher, wrote of the Apostles in his memoirs that the tie of attachment to this society is much the strongest corporate bond which I have known in my life and these eleven members were from Christs, Kings, St. Johns College and Trinity. A twelfth member Benjamin Hall Kennedy is buried in the Mill Road Cemetery, bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore joined as students, as did John Maynard Keynes, who invited Ludwig Wittgenstein to join. However, Wittgenstein did not enjoy it and attended infrequently, Russell had been worried that Wittgenstein would not appreciate the groups unseriousness and style of humour. The Apostles became well known outside Cambridge in the years before the First World War with the rise to eminence of the group of known as the Bloomsbury Group. John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and his brother James, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster, Keynes, Woolf and Lytton Strachey subsequently gained prominence as members of Bloomsbury. The Apostles came to attention again following the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring in 1951. Three Cambridge graduates with access to the top levels of government in Britain, the three known agents were Apostle Guy Burgess, an MI6 officer and secretary to the deputy foreign minister, Donald MacLean, foreign office secretary, and Kim Philby, MI6 officer and journalist
20.
Lancaster, Lancashire
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Lancaster /ˈlæŋkəstər/, or /ˈlæŋˌkæstər/ is a city and the county town of Lancashire, England. It is situated on the River Lune and has a population of 45,952, long existing as a commercial, cultural and educational centre, Lancaster is the settlement that gives Lancashire its name. Lancaster was granted city status in 1937 for its association with the crown. With its history based on its port and canal, Lancaster is an ancient settlement, dominated by Lancaster Castle, Lancaster Priory Church and it is also home to the campus-based Lancaster University and a campus of the University of Cumbria. The coin evidence also suggests that the fort was not continuously inhabited in early years. The fort was rebuilt in stone around 102 AD, the fort underwent a few more extensions, and at its largest area it was 9–10 acres. The evidence suggests that the fort remained active into the early 5th century, little is known about Lancaster between the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century and the Norman Conquest in the late 11th century. Despite a lack of documentation from this period, it is likely that Lancaster was still inhabited, Lancaster was on the fringes of the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, and over time control may have changed from one to the other. Archaeological evidence suggests there was a monastery on or near the site of todays Lancaster Priory by the 700s or 800s. For example, an Anglo-Saxon runic cross found at the Priory in 1807, Lancaster was probably one of the numerous monasteries founded under Wilfrid. The founding charter of the Priory, dated 1094, is the first known document which is specific to Lancaster, by this time William had given Lancaster and its surrounding region to Roger de Poitou. This document also suggests that the monastery had been refounded as a church at some point prior to 1066. Lancaster became a borough in 1193 under King Richard I and its first charter, dated 12 June 1193, was from John, Count of Mortain, who later became King of England. Lancaster Castle, partly built in the 13th century and enlarged by Elizabeth I, Lancaster Castle is well known as the site of the Pendle witch trials in 1612. It was said that the court based in the castle sentenced more people to be hanged than any other in the country outside London, earning Lancaster the nickname, Lancaster also figured prominently in the suppression of Catholicism during the reformation with the execution of at least eleven Catholic priests. A memorial to the Lancaster Martyrs is located close to the city centre, the traditional emblem for the House of Lancaster is a red rose, the red rose of Lancaster, similar to that of the House of York, which is a white rose. These names derive from the emblems of the Royal Duchies of Lancaster and this erupted into a civil war over rival claims to the throne during the Wars of the Roses. In more recent times, the term Wars of the Roses has been applied to rivalry in sports teams representing Lancashire and Yorkshire, not just the cities of Lancaster and York
21.
West Indies
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Indigenous peoples were the first inhabitants of the West Indies. In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at the islands, after the first of the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, Europeans began to use the term West Indies to distinguish the region from the East Indies of South Asia and Southeast Asia. In the late century, French, English and Dutch merchants and privateers began their operations in the Caribbean Sea, attacking Spanish and Portuguese shipping. These African slaves wrought a demographic revolution, replacing or joining with either the indigenous Caribs or the European settlers who were there as indentured servants. The Dutch, allied with the Caribs of the Orinoco would eventually carry the struggles deep into South America, first along the Orinoco and these interconnected commercial and diplomatic relations made up the Western Caribbean Zone which was in place in the early eighteenth century. In 1916, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the United States for US$25 million in gold, the Danish West Indies became an insular area of the US, called the United States Virgin Islands. Between 1958 and 1962, the United Kingdom re-organised all their West Indies island territories into the West Indies Federation and they hoped that the Federation would coalesce into a single, independent nation. West Indian is the term used by the U. S. government to refer to people of the West Indies. Tulane University professor Rosanne Adderly says he phrase West Indies distinguished the territories encountered by Columbus, … The term West Indies was eventually used by all European nations to describe their own acquired territories in the Americas. Despite the collapse of the Federation … the West Indies continues to field a joint cricket team for international competition, the West Indies cricket team includes participants from Guyana, which is geographically located in South America. More than Slaves and Sugar, Recent Historiography of the Trans-imperial Caribbean, a Concise History of the Caribbean. Martin, Tony, Caribbean History, From Pre-colonial Origins to the Present
22.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
23.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
24.
King's Lynn (UK Parliament constituency)
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Until 1918 it was a parliamentary borough, after which the name was transferred to a county constituency. It was abolished for the February 1974 general election, sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister, was an MP for the constituency for almost the entirety of his parliamentary career, from 1702 to 1742. 1950-1974, The Municipal Borough of Kings Lynn, the Urban District of New Hunstanton, and the Rural Districts of Docking, Freebridge Lynn, representation reduced to one member General Election 1914/15 Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1915. The Constitutional Year Book for 1913 J E Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons Leigh Rayments Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with K
25.
Jamaica
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Jamaica is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea, consisting of the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles. The island,10,990 square kilometres in area, lies about 145 kilometres south of Cuba, Jamaica is the fourth-largest island country in the Caribbean, by area. Inhabited by the indigenous Arawak and Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494, Many of the indigenous people died of disease, and the Spanish imported African slaves as labourers. Named Santiago, the island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, under British colonial rule Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with its plantation economy highly dependent on slaves imported from Africa. The British fully emancipated all slaves in 1838, and many chose to have subsistence farms rather than to work on plantations. Beginning in the 1840s, the British imported Chinese and Indian indentured labour to work on plantations, the island achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. With 2.8 million people, Jamaica is the third-most populous Anglophone country in the Americas, Kingston is the countrys capital and largest city, with a population of 937,700. Jamaicans predominately have African ancestry, with significant European, Chinese, Hakka, Indian, due to a high rate of emigration for work since the 1960s, Jamaica has a large diaspora around the world, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Jamaica is a Commonwealth realm, with Queen Elizabeth II as its monarch and her appointed representative in the country is the Governor-General of Jamaica, an office held by Sir Patrick Allen since 2009. Andrew Holness has served as the head of government and Prime Minister of Jamaica from March 2016, the indigenous people, the Taíno, called it Xaymaca in Arawakan, meaning the Land of Wood and Water or the Land of Springs. Colloquially Jamaicans refer to their island as the Rock. Slang names such as Jamrock, Jamdown, or briefly Ja, have derived from this, the Arawak and Taíno indigenous people, originating in South America, settled on the island between 4000 and 1000 BC. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1494, there were more than 200 villages ruled by caciques, the south coast of Jamaica was the most populated, especially around the area now known as Old Harbour. The Taino still inhabited Jamaica when the English took control of the island in 1655, the Jamaican National Heritage Trust is attempting to locate and document any evidence of the Taino/Arawak. Christopher Columbus claimed Jamaica for Spain after landing there in 1494 and his probable landing point was Dry Harbour, now called Discovery Bay, although there is some debate that it might have been St. Anns Bay. St. Anns Bay was named Saint Gloria by Columbus, as the first sighting of the land, the capital was moved to Spanish Town, then called St. Jago de la Vega, around 1534. Spanish Town has the oldest cathedral of the British colonies in the Caribbean, the Spanish were forcibly evicted by the English at Ocho Rios in St. Ann. In 1655, the English, led by Sir William Penn and General Robert Venables, the English continued to import African slaves as labourers
26.
South America
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South America is a continent located in the western hemisphere, mostly in the southern hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the northern hemisphere. It may also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas, which is the used in nations that speak Romance languages. The reference to South America instead of other regions has increased in the last decades due to changing geopolitical dynamics. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean, North America and it includes twelve sovereign states, a part of France, and a non-sovereign area. In addition to this, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, South America has an area of 17,840,000 square kilometers. Its population as of 2005 has been estimated at more than 371,090,000, South America ranks fourth in area and fifth in population. Brazil is by far the most populous South American country, with more than half of the population, followed by Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela. In recent decades Brazil has also concentrated half of the regions GDP and has become a first regional power, most of the population lives near the continents western or eastern coasts while the interior and the far south are sparsely populated. Most of the continent lies in the tropics, the continents cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin with the interaction of indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Given a long history of colonialism, the majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish. South America occupies the portion of the Americas. The continent is delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border. Almost all of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate, South Americas major mineral resources are gold, silver, copper, iron ore, tin, and petroleum. These resources found in South America have brought high income to its countries especially in times of war or of rapid growth by industrialized countries elsewhere. However, the concentration in producing one major export commodity often has hindered the development of diversified economies and this is leading to efforts to diversify production to drive away from staying as economies dedicated to one major export. South America is one of the most biodiverse continents on earth, South America is home to many interesting and unique species of animals including the llama, anaconda, piranha, jaguar, vicuña, and tapir. The Amazon rainforests possess high biodiversity, containing a proportion of the Earths species. Brazil is the largest country in South America, encompassing around half of the land area
27.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
28.
Liberalism
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Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberalism first became a political movement during the Age of Enlightenment. Liberalism rejected the social and political norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy. The 17th-century philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a philosophical tradition. Locke argued that man has a natural right to life, liberty and property. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with representative democracy, prominent revolutionaries in the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. Liberalism started to spread rapidly especially after the French Revolution, the 19th century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, South America, and North America. During the 20th century, liberal ideas spread even further as liberal democracies found themselves on the side in both world wars. In Europe and North America, the establishment of social liberalism became a key component in the expansion of the welfare state, today, liberal parties continue to wield power and influence throughout the world. Words such as liberal, liberty, libertarian, and libertine all trace their history to the Latin liber, which means free. One of the first recorded instances of the word occurs in 1375. The words early connection with the education of a medieval university soon gave way to a proliferation of different denotations and connotations. In 16th century England, liberal could have positive or negative attributes in referring to someones generosity or indiscretion, in Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare wrote of a liberal villaine who hath. confest his vile encounters. With the rise of the Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively more positive undertones, being defined as free from narrow prejudice in 1781, in 1815, the first use of the word liberalism appeared in English. In Spain, the Liberales, the first group to use the label in a political context. From 1820 to 1823, during the Trienio Liberal, King Ferdinand VII was compelled by the liberales to swear to uphold the Constitution, by the middle of the 19th century, liberal was used as a politicised term for parties and movements worldwide. Over time, the meaning of the word began to diverge in different parts of the world. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, In the United States, liberalism is associated with the policies of the New Deal programme of the Democratic administration of Pres
29.
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
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Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG, GCB, PC, FRS was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister in the mid-19th century. For most of 1830 to 1865 he dominated British foreign policy when Britain was at the height of her power and he succeeded to his fathers Irish peerage in 1802. He became a Tory MP in 1807, and was made Secretary at War in 1809 and he held the job until 1828, entering the cabinet in 1827 when George Canning became Prime Minister. Less than a later he resigned with other Canningites. In opposition he switched his focus to foreign policy, and he was Foreign Secretary when the Whigs were in power, dealing with a succession of crises in Europe and beyond. Some of his actions, now sometimes termed liberal interventionist, were highly controversial at the time. In 1852 he became Home Secretary in Aberdeens coalition government, the Peelites having insisted on Russell getting the Foreign Office and he passed various social reforms but opposed electoral ones. He had two periods in office, 1855–1858 and 1859–1865, before dying at almost 81, a few months after winning an election with an increased majority. He remains, to date, the last Prime Minister to die in office and his policies regarding India, Italy, Belgium and Spain had long-term impact, while his policies toward France, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States proved more ephemeral. He was a master of public opinion, achieved by stroking British nationalism and his weaknesses include mishandling of personal relations, and long-standing disagreements with the Queen over the royal role in determining foreign policy. Palmerston built a popular following among the British electorate, by promoting himself, British nationalism. He assiduously fostered the press, which gave him very favourable coverage, Queen Victoria and most of the political leadership distrusted him, but his popular strength prevailed. Henry John Temple was born in his familys Westminster house to the Irish branch of the Temple family on 20 October 1784, Henry was to become the 3rd Viscount Palmerston. His family derived their title from the Peerage of Ireland and his father was Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston, and his mother Mary, daughter of Benjamin Mee, a London merchant. From 1792 to 1794, the young future Lord Palmerston accompanied his family on a long Continental tour, whilst in Italy Palmerston acquired an Italian tutor, who taught him to speak and write fluent Italian. He was educated at Harrow School, admiral Sir Augustus Clifford, 1st Bt. was a fag to Palmerston, Viscount Althorp and Viscount Duncannon and later remembered Palmerston as by far the most merciful of the three. Palmerston was often engaged in fights and fellow Old Harrovians remembered Palmerston as someone who stood up to bullies twice his size. Palmerstons father took him to the House of Commons in 1799, Palmerston was then at the University of Edinburgh, where he learnt political economy from Dugald Stewart, a friend of the Scottish philosophers Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith
30.
Lord Ellenborough
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Baron Ellenborough, of Ellenborough in the County of Cumberland, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1802 for the lawyer, judge and politician Sir Edward Law and his son, the second Baron, notably served as Governor-General of India. In 1844 he was created Viscount Southam, of Southam in the County of Gloucester and these titles were also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. His only son predeceased him and on his death in 1871 the viscountcy, however, he was succeeded in the barony by his nephew, the third Baron. He was the son of the Hon. Charles Law, Member of Parliament for Cambridge University, in 1885 he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Towry. On the death of his son, the fourth Baron, this line of the family failed and he was succeeded by his cousin, the fifth Baron. When he died the title passed to his brother, the sixth Baron. As of 2016 the title is held by the latters great-grandson, the ninth Baron, the family seat is near Market Harborough, Leicestershire. New York, St Martins Press,1990, Leigh Rayments Peerage Pages
31.
Government of India Act 1858
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The Government of India Act 1858 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on August 2,1858. Its provisions called for the liquidation of the British East India Company, however, before this bill was to be passed, Palmerstone was forced to resign on another issue. Later Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby introduced another bill which was titled as “An Act for the Better Government of India”. This act provided that India was to be governed directly and in the name of the Crown, the Indian Rebellion of 1857 forced the British Government to pass the Act. The Companys territories in India were to be vested in the Queen, India was to be governed in the Queens name. The Queens Principal Secretary of State received the powers and duties of the Companys Court of Directors, a council of fifteen members was appointed to assist the Secretary of State for India. The council became a body in India affairs. For all the communications between Britain and India, the Secretary of State became the real channel, the Secretary of State for India was empowered to send some secret despatches to India directly without consulting the Council. He was also authorised to constitute special committees of his Council, the Crown was empowered to appoint a Governor-General and the Governors of the Presidencies. An Indian Civil Service was to be created under the control of the Secretary of State, hereto all the property and other assets of the East India Company were transferred to the Crown. The Crown also assumed the responsibilities of the Company as they related to treaties, contracts, the Act ushered in a new period of Indian history, bringing about the end of Company rule in India
32.
House of Commons of the United Kingdom
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The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is the lower house of the countrys parliament. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster, officially, the full name of the house is, The Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The House is a body consisting of 650 members known as Members of Parliament. Members are elected to represent constituencies by first-past-the-post and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved, under the Parliament Act 1911, the Lords power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The Government is primarily responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as he or she retains the support of a majority of its members. Although it does not formally elect the prime minister, the position of the parties in the House of Commons is of overriding importance, by convention, the prime minister is answerable to, and must maintain the support of, the House of Commons. Since 1963, by convention, the minister is always a member of the House of Commons. The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the Government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence, confidence and no confidence motions are sometimes phrased explicitly, for instance, That this House has no confidence in Her Majestys Government. Many other motions were considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such, in particular, important bills that form a part of the Governments agenda were formerly considered matters of confidence, as is the annual Budget. Parliament normally sits for a term of five years. Subject to that limit, the minister could formerly choose the timing of the dissolution of parliament. By this second mechanism, the government of the United Kingdom can change without a general election. In such circumstances there may not even have been a party leadership election, as the new leader may be chosen by acclaim. A prime minister may resign if he or she is not defeated at the polls. In such a case, the premiership goes to whoever can command a majority in the House of Commons, in practice this is usually the new leader of the outgoing prime ministers party. Until 1965, the Conservative Party had no mechanism for electing a new leader, when Anthony Eden resigned as PM in 1957 without recommending a successor and it fell to the Queen to appoint Harold Macmillan as the new prime minister, after taking the advice of ministers. By convention, all ministers must be members of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords, a handful have been appointed who were outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament either in a by-election or by receiving a peerage. Since 1902, all ministers have been members of the Commons
33.
Otto of Greece
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Otto, also spelled Otho, was a Bavarian prince who became the first modern King of Greece in 1832 under the Convention of London. He reigned until he was deposed in 1862, the second son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Otto ascended the newly created throne of Greece while still a minor. His government was run by a three-man regency council made up of Bavarian court officials. Upon reaching his majority, Otto removed the regents when they proved unpopular with the people, eventually his subjects demands for a Constitution proved overwhelming, and in the face of an armed but peaceful insurrection Otto in 1843 granted a constitution. However he rigged elections using fraud and terror, throughout his reign Otto was unable to resolve Greeces poverty and prevent economic meddling from outside. Greek politics in this era was based on affiliations with the three Great Powers, and Ottos ability to maintain the support of the powers was key to his remaining in power. To remain strong, Otto had to play the interests of each of the Great Powers Greek adherents against the others, while not aggravating the Great Powers. When Greece was blockaded by the British Royal Navy in 1850 and again in 1854, to stop Greece from attacking the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War, Ottos standing amongst Greeks suffered. As a result, there was an attempt on the Queen. He died in exile in Bavaria in 1867, Otto was born as Prince Otto Friedrich Ludwig of Bavaria at Schloss Mirabell in Salzburg, as second son of Crown Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. His father served there as Bavarian governor-general, through his ancestor, the Bavarian Duke John II, Otto was a descendant of the Greek imperial dynasties of Komnenos and Laskaris. When he was elected king, the Great Powers extracted a pledge from Ottos father to him from hostile actions against the Ottoman Empire. They also insisted that his title be King of Greece, rather than King of the Hellenes, aged not quite 18, the young prince arrived in Greece with 3,500 Bavarian troops and three Bavarian advisors aboard the British frigate HMS Madagascar. Although he did not speak Greek, he endeared himself to his adopted country by adopting the Greek national costume. Von Armansperg was the President of the Privy Council, and the first representative of the new Greek government, the other members of the Regency Council were Karl von Abel and Georg Ludwig von Maurer, with whom von Armansperg often clashed. After the King reached his majority in 1835, von Armansperg was made Arch-Secretary, britain and the Rothschild bank, who were underwriting the Greek loans, insisted on financial stringency from Armansperg. In addition, the regency showed little respect for local customs, as a Roman Catholic, Otto himself was viewed as a heretic by many pious Greeks, however, his heirs would have to be Orthodox, according to the terms of the 1843 Constitution. King Otto brought his personal brewmaster with him, Herr Fuchs, a Bavarian who stayed in Greece after Ottos departure and they were later pardoned under popular pressure, while Greek judges who resisted Bavarian pressure and refused to sign the death warrants, were saluted as heroes
34.
Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Alfred reigned as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from 1893 to 1900. He was the son and fourth child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He was known as the Duke of Edinburgh from 1866 until he succeeded his paternal uncle Ernest II as the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and he was second in the line of succession behind his elder brother, the Prince of Wales. He was known to his family as Affie, after a childhood mispronunciation of the name Alfred, Alfred was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, at the Private Chapel in Windsor Castle on 6 September 1844. His godparents were his mothers first cousin, Prince George of Cambridge, his aunt, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Alfred studied violin at Holyrood, Edinburgh, where his accompanist was Hungarian expatriate George Lichtenstein. Alfred remained second in line to the British throne from his birth until 8 January 1864, any legitimate children of his older brother took priority in the succession list. Alfred became third in line to the throne and as Edward and Alexandra continued to have children, in 1856 it was decided that Prince Alfred, in accordance with his own wishes, should enter the Royal Navy. A separate establishment was accordingly assigned to him, with Lieutenant J. C. Cowell, RE and he passed the examination in August 1858, and was appointed as midshipman in HMS Euryalus at the age of 14. In July 1860, while on this ship, he paid a visit to the Cape Colony. He took part in a hunt at Hartebeeste-Hoek, resulting in the slaughter of large numbers of game animals and she and her late husband had made plans for him to succeed to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg. Prince Alfred, therefore, remained in the navy, and was promoted to lieutenant on 24 February 1863 and he was promoted to captain on 23 February 1866 and was appointed to the command of the frigate HMS Galatea in January 1867. In the Queens Birthday Honours on 24 May 1866, the Prince was created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Ulster and he took his seat in the House of Lords on 8 June. While still in command of the Galatea, the Duke of Edinburgh started from Plymouth on 24 January 1867 for his round the world. On 7 June 1867, he left Gibraltar, reached the Cape of Good Hope on 24 July and he landed at Glenelg, South Australia, on 31 October. Being the first member of the family to visit Australia. During his stay of five months he visited Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane. Adelaide school Prince Alfred College was named in his honour to mark such an occasion, at the function he was wounded in the back by a revolver fired by Henry James OFarrell
35.
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
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Scion of one of the most powerful aristocratic families, his great achievements, says A. J. P. Nevertheless Russell led his Whig Party into support for reform, he was the architect of the great Reform Act of 1832. As Prime Minister his luck ran out and he headed a government that failed to deal with a famine in Ireland that caused the loss of a quarter of its population. Taylor concludes that as minister, he was not a success. Russell was born small and premature into the highest echelons of the British aristocracy, as a younger son of a Duke, he bore the courtesy title Lord John Russell, but he was not a peer in his own right. He was, therefore, able to sit in the House of Commons until he was made an earl in 1861, after being withdrawn from Westminster School due to ill health, Russell was educated by tutors. He attended the University of Edinburgh,1809 and 1812, he did not take a degree, during his continental travels, Russell had a 90-minute meeting with Napoleon in December 1814 during the former emperors exile at Elba. Russell entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1813, in 1819, Russell embraced the cause of parliamentary reform, and led the more reformist wing of the Whigs throughout the 1820s. When the Whigs came to power in 1830 in Earl Greys government, Russell entered the government as Paymaster of the Forces, and was soon elevated to the Cabinet. He was one of the leaders of the fight for the Reform Act 1832. In 1834, when the leader of the Commons, Lord Althorp, succeeded to the peerage as Earl Spencer and this appointment prompted King William IV to terminate Lord Melbournes government, the last time in British history that a monarch dismissed a prime minister. Nevertheless Russell retained his position for the rest of the decade, during his career in Parliament, Lord John Russell represented the City of London. Taylor emphasises Russells central role in the expansion of liberty and in leading his Whig Party to a commitment to a reform agenda. In 1845, as leader of the Opposition, Russell came out in favour of repeal of the Corn Laws, in June the following year the Corn Laws were repealed but only by virtue of Whig support. The same day Peels Irish Coercion Bill, which the Whigs did not support, was defeated, Russell became Prime Minister, this time Grey not objecting to Palmerstons appointment. Russell’s government introduced reforms such as the Ten Hours Act and measures to improve the training of teachers and his premiership was frustrated, however, because of party disunity and infighting, and he was unable to secure the success of many of the measures he was interested in passing. He fought with his headstrong Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, whose belligerence, in 1847 Palmerston provoked a confrontation with the French government by undermining the plans of the Spanish court to marry the young Spanish Queen and her sister into the French royal family. The Government prevailed but Palmerston came out of the affair with his popularity at new heights since he was seen as the champion of defending British citizens anywhere in the world, Palmerston was forced to resign when he recognised Napoleon IIIs coup of 2 December 1851, without royal approval
36.
CSS Alabama
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CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built in 1862 for the Confederate States Navy at Birkenhead on the River Mersey opposite Liverpool, England by John Laird Sons and Company. Alabama served as a commerce raider, attacking Union merchant and naval ships over the course of her two-year career. She was sunk in June 1864 by USS Kearsarge at the Battle of Cherbourg outside the port of Cherbourg, Alabama was built in secrecy in 1862 by British shipbuilders John Laird Sons and Company, in north west England at their shipyards at Birkenhead, Wirral, opposite Liverpool. The construction was arranged by the Confederate agent Commander James Bulloch, the contract was arranged through the Fraser Trenholm Company, a cotton broker in Liverpool with ties to the Confederacy. Under prevailing British neutrality law, it was possible to build a ship designed as an armed vessel, initially known as hull number 290 to hide her identity, the ship was launched as Enrica on 15 May 1862 and secretly slipped out of Birkenhead on 29 July 1862. Union Captain Tunis A. M. Craven, commander of USS Tuscarora, was in Southampton and was tasked with intercepting the new ship, Agent Bulloch arranged for a civilian crew and captain to sail Enrica to Terceira Island in the Azores. With Bulloch at his side, the new captain, Raphael Semmes. After three days of back-breaking work by the three crews, Enrica was equipped as a naval cruiser, designated a commerce raider. Following her commissioning as CSS Alabama, Bulloch then returned to Liverpool to continue his work for the Confederate Navy. Alabamas British-made ordnance was composed of six muzzle-loading, broadside, 32-pounder naval smoothbores, the pivot cannons were placed fore and aft of the main mast and positioned roughly amidships along the decks center line. From those positions, they could be rotated to fire across the port or starboard sides of the cruiser, the fore pivot cannon was a heavy, long-range 100-pounder, 7-inch bore Blakely rifled muzzle-loader, the aft pivot cannon a large, 8-inch smoothbore. The new Confederate cruiser was powered by sail and by two John Laird Sons and Company 300 horsepower horizontal steam engines, driving a single, Griffiths-type. With the screw retracted using the sterns brass lifting gear mechanism, Alabama could make up to ten knots under sail alone and 13.25 knots when her sail, the ship was purposely commissioned about a mile off Terceira Island in international waters on 24 August 1862. All the men from Agripinna and Bahama had been transferred to the deck of Enrica. Captain Raphael Semmes mounted a gun-carriage and read his commission from President Jefferson Davis, upon completion of the reading, musicians that assembled from among the three ships crews began to play the tune Dixie just as the quartermaster finished hauling down Enricas British colors. A signal cannon boomed and the stops to the halliards at the peaks of the gaff and mainmast were broken. With that the cruiser became Confederate States Steamer Alabama, the ships motto, Aide-toi et Dieu taidera was engraved in the bronze of the great double ships wheel. Captain Semmes then made a speech about the Southern cause to the seamen, asking them to sign on for a voyage of unknown length
37.
Suez Canal
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The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez. It was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, after 10 years of construction, it was officially opened on November 17,1869. It extends from the terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km, including its northern and southern access channels, in 2012,17,225 vessels traversed the canal. The original canal was a waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass. It contains no locks system, with seawater flowing freely through it, in general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez, the canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag. In August 2014, construction was launched to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km to speed the canals transit time, the expansion was planned to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day. At a cost of $8.4 billion, this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities, the New Suez Canal, as the expansion was dubbed, was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony on 6 August 2015. On 24 February 2016, the Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel and this side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal anytime of day and night. Ancient west–east canals were built to travel from the Nile River to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramesses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a portion of the first, was constructed under the reign of Necho II, the legendary Sesostris may have started work on an ancient canal joining the Nile with the Red Sea. In his Meteorology, Aristotle wrote, One of their kings tried to make a canal to it, so he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it. Strabo wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote,165. Later the Persian king Darius had the idea, and yet again Ptolemy II. This proved to be the canal made by the Persian king Darius I
38.
Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov
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Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov was an influential Russian statesman and a counselor to Tsar Alexander II. Referring to his influence and reactionary policies, his more liberal opponents sometimes called him Peter IV. Pyotr Andreyevich came from the Shuvalov family which has been prominent in the Russian culture and his father, Count Andrey Petrovich Shuvalov, was a prominent figure at the courts of Nicholas I of Russia and Alexander II of Russia. His mother was Thekla Ignatyevna Walentinowicz, Prince Zubovs widow and heiress, Count Pavel Andreyevich Shuvalov was his brother. Rundāle Palace was notable family estate, after graduating from the Corps of Pages, Pyotr Shuvalov rose through the ranks of Alexander IIs retinue, making wing adjutant, major general of the retinue and adjutant general in short order. In 1857 he was put in charge of the Saint Petersburg police, in 1860 Shuvalov was appointed director of the Department of General Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in 1861 made Chief of Staff of the Special Corps of Gendarmes. He proposed that the Corps be abolished, which contributed to his reputation as a liberal and his plan was rejected and he resigned in late 1861. He served elsewhere in the early 1860s and in 1864 was appointed governor-general of the Baltic region and he formed a group of similarly minded moderate ministers and, with the help of the Tsars confidant Field Marshal Aleksandr Baryatinskiy, pursued a policy of moderate reform. Shuvalov was in favor of developing local self-government but on the basis of strengthening the position of the landed gentry. One must openly introduce a system by establishing two houses and giving them a decisive voice. If this cannot be immediately, one must, at least. Shuvalov continued his predecessors reforms, although more cautiously and he reorganized Zemstvo in 1870 and overhauled the military in 1874, reducing the length of service from 15 years to 6. At the same time, he strengthened the governments censorship system, in 1872, he was promoted General of the Cavalry (1872, a rank equivalent to full General in other armies. In 1873, Shuvalov was sent to London on a mission to arrange a marriage between Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia and the Duke of Edinburgh, the mission was a success and the two married in January 1874. Shuvalov was also supposed to reassure the British government that Alexander II had no plans to conquer the Central Asian Khanate of Khiva. Although Khiva did fall to Russian troops in 1874, he was able to blame it on the excess of zeal. In April 1874, the Committee of Ministers approved the creation of a commission with representation from Zemstvo, local gentry. However, other, more mundane explanations for his downfall, boasting about his influence on the Tsar or making a remark about his mistress Catherine Dolgorukov, have also been suggested
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stanley (Family)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 776.
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