This is because in the 18th century the colonists and most people living in Great Britain understood what the country was–it was England the country, ruled by the English monarch who also happened to have a crown that was the unified crowns of England and Scotland, the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish were subjects of the English. This was absolutely the reality both perception wise and in common parlance. No one in government in the UK in the 18th century was under any delusions that Scotland was a coequal part of the Union, Wales even less so. There is actually a reason the Scots bitterly opposed the Act of Union (at least a portion of them), and even fought rebellions (partially) over the Act.
It’s a very modern “promotion of domestic tranquility” conception of the earlier 21st century that the ruling elites of the UK attempted to smooth things over and be like “oh the English are above no one, we’re all British subjects happy as can be.” In the 18th century I assure you no one living up in Scotland felt this way, nor would their English overlords have much wanted them to–they wanted it understood who was in charge, it was the English ruling class.
Yes. Is it your imagination that because they were ethnic Germans and neither spoke much if any English they weren’t English monarchs? The monarchy in the country was quite weak by the time the Hanoverians were put on the throne–note that word–put on the throne. By the men who actually ran the country, the cabal of leaders of the English upper class. They also didn’t much consult the Scots for example about replacing the House of Stuart (whose line of acceptable non-Catholic heirs laid out in legislation from the 17th century ran out with Anne’s death), with a cadet offshoot of it based out of Hanover. That was done by the Act of Settlement passed by the Parliament of England. The Parliament of Scotland expressed its unhappiness with it, and asserted a right to name their own successor to Anne when her time came, and a few years later under English economic pressure and with a great deal of outright corrupt bribing and promising of pensions and offices, the Scottish Parliament agreed to the Act of Union that quite easily sidestepped the matter of Scottish approval for Anne’s Germanic successor by abolishing the Scottish Parliament entirely. Scotland ended up with only one MP more than Cornwall in the new combined Parliament, and 16 Peers in the House of Lords, who could not even vote. It was not at all an equitable arrangement, and outside of the ruling class of Scotland that was quite literally bribed to go along with it (although there were larger economic reasons you could argue it was a necessity) there was widespread bitterness and opposition to this. It ultimately “didn’t matter” because Scotland was the Junior partner and always had been.
This was no secret to anyone alive at the time, and there’s a reason there was 50-60 years of violence in Scotland with English soldiers being stationed there treating it almost like an occupied country.
The problem, of course, being that those who ruled 1509-1603 (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) have no known descendants alive today; neither do Mary II (1689-94), William III (1689-1702), or Anne (1702-1714), while Charles II (1660-85) had no legitimate offspring and the legitimate line of James II (1685-88) died out in 1807.
[Note that Prince William and Prince George ARE descended from both Charles II and James II (and hence their father Charles I), via two of Charles’s and one of James’s illegitimate offspring who were ancestors of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.]
No, the Queen Mother was also descended from the Normans in several lines, as were a number of the foreign royals who married later English/Scottish/British kings (e.g., Edward III → Isabella de Coucy → Marie de Coucy → Robert of Bar → Jeanne de Bar → Pierre II de Luxembourg → Marie of Luxembourg → Antoinette de Bourbon → Mary of Guise → Mary Queen of Scots, or for another example Edward I → Margaret of England → John III of Brabant → Margaret of Brabant → Margaret Countess of Flanders → Mary of Burgundy → Margaret of Savoy → Philip, Elector Palatine of the Rhine → Amalie of the Palatinate → Margaret of Pomerania → Elizabeth of Brunswick-Grubenhagen → Alexander of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg → Ernest Günther of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg → Louise Charlotte of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg → Peter August Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck → Karl Anton August of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck → Friedrich Karl Ludwig of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck → Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg → Christian IX of Denmark → Alexandra of Denmark → George V of the UK).
Yes, yes, yes. England the nation certainly exists, and it has a variety of national institutions.
But those institutions do not include a monarchy. There is no more a king or queen of England than there is a king or queen of Wessex, or Gloucester, or Adlestrop. There used to be Kings of Wessex, bu there haven’t been since 886. There used to be Kings and Queens of England, but there haven’t been since 1707. That was a very deliberate and very significant decision.
It’s true that if I mention “the Queen of England”, nobody is in any doubt as to who I mean. But people will still object to the term because it implies a view of the UK and its monarchy which privileges England, and accords it a status within the UK which it does not in fact enjoy. Hence people object to the usage.
(It’s true, as pointed out above, that the UK monarchs can trace their descent all the way back to William the Conqueror, King of England in 1066. But in fact their descent from the Scottish Kings is much older; it goes back to Dòmhnall II, the first monarch to use the title “King of Scots/King of Scotland” in 889 and, through him, to Coinneach I mac Ailpein, King of the Picts in 843. So if for some reason an impressively long monarchical descent is the characteristic to which you wish to draw attention, you would refer to the UK monarchs as Kings of Scotland rather than Kings of England.)
Every time the Queen came to Canada on a royal visit, there would be one kerfuffle or faux pas after another about this or that. Did premier whasisname actually touch the Royal Back to help her up the stairs? Did someone use the wrong address or title? Pierre Trudeau famously did a pirouette behind the Queen’s back, a little disrespectful. One I remember was someone mentioned they had served a meal in public; the Queen politely pushed the food around the plate and took a few nibbles, but someone forgot to tell the organizers of that event that the Queen does not eat meals in public (presumably, to avoid the spectacle of things like trying to chew on something really tough, or spit out chicken bones, etc.) And when Richard Hadfield, premier of New Brunswick, accompanied the royal party onward to Ottawa on a private jet, nobody’s bags were immune from inspection. Apparently the Mounties found Hadfield’s bag had a small amount of pot in it - back in the 1970’s.
A really good story I read - there was a particularly eccentric mayor of a town in New Brunswick(?) who at the ceremony speech started with “Prince Phillip; we are delighted to welcome you and your lovely wife to our great city…” Apparently Phillip laughed harder than anyone.
When a small, weak, poor country joins with a larger, stronger, wealthier country, what do you expect?
It’s worth bearing in mind that by 1707 Scotland was a corrupt, failing state in the grip of an economic crisis – and that was certainly not England’s fault. In general, the upper classes in Scotland supported the Act of Union and the lower classes didn’t. (But both classes benefitted from the merged economy, and free access to the English colonies in America.)
By 1762 there was a Scottish Prime Minister, and widespread English resentment about ‘too many Scots in powerful positions in government’.
William Gladstone, one of the most influential politicians and Prime Ministers of the 19th century, was Scottish, and in recent times Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were Scottish.
Brexit, of course, has changed everything, and the chances are that Scotland will now support independence.
Enough with the hijack though. Perhaps someone should start another thread about Scotland.
FIFA surely has no say in what is, or isn’t, an internationally recognised sovereign state. It doesn’t claim to have. It recognises the FA as a member association, but that does not imply that England is a sovereign state.
Neither one was “The King of England”, which is the whole point of this discussion.
Everyone knows that England has more de facto economic and political power than Scotland. The point that several people appear to be missing is that that does not affect the legal/constitutional status of Scotland.
Is it now? Do you have any cites for corruption being worse in Scotland than England or other countries? Is there any reason you are completely neglecting the context that Martin Hyde alluded to, the English fear of Scotland choosing a different monarch, the Alien Act 1705 etc?
Do you have a cite for reliable historians who believe that English interests were not committing piracy against Scottish ones in the years before 1706?
Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name, Sae fam’d in martial story.
Now Sark rins over Solway sands, An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro’ many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English stell we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
O would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay, Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace! But pith and power, till my last hour,
I’ll mak this declaration;
We’re bought and sold for English gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
It does, though. That’s why she’s called the Queen of England. Americans know what the UK is, and we still call her the Queen of England, because she’s quite obviously the Queen of England, and because (even if we’re not always clever on the details) we know that the Queen of England’s ideas about fraternal pan-British co-equality is horseshit.
Not on me right now, but my point is that it’s a stretch to say that Scotland’s “economic crisis” had nothing to do with English actions. The Alien Act was specifically intended to harm Scotland’s economic interests.
I should like to see that statutory definition cited. I don’t think there has ever been any Act of Parliament that said that Wales was a part of England. There are, of course, lots of acts that say they apply to England and Wales, which results in England and Wales having the same legal system (as opposed to Scotland). There are also some statutory definitions that govern minor things, such as whether statutory references to England include Monmouthshire. But I’m not aware of any statute that ever flatly said that Wales was part of England.