How does "private property" of the royals work in the UK?

Factual Questions
21

I’m not sure I understand - it sounds like poh-tay-toe poh-tah-toe. There are lands attached to titles, and the title goes to whoever qualifies. I believe it was mentioned that the monarch gets the Cornwall monies if no separate Cornwallian qualifies for it. So perhaps the best analogy is that the title/estate combo is like a corporation. Why bother calling someone Duke of Lancaster if they already are acalled King or Queen? Your explanation seems a tad confusing, too - yes, modern Lord-wannabees, like our own ex-Canadian Lord Black of Crossharbour, buy a peerage and no actual land is attached to that title in the same legal manner as the old hereditary titles. Do the old titles from centuries back really split into a lucrative “real estate” estate and a dead title if no male heirs? Or does the land title disappear with the title title? When’s the last example of this split?

(Just out of curiosity, I’m vaguely aware that places like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands have interesting special legal status - is there a hereditary title that someone holds/held to go along with that, or is it because in times immemorial they were an anarcho-sydicalist commune that elected their executive member of the week?)

22

If memory serves, the monarch is Lord of Man (now there’s a title), and in the Channel Islands technically still Duke of Normandy because they’re the last relics of the holdings of William who conquered Saxon England.

Because of their geographical situation, these islands were left to govern themselves for internal purposes, but attached to the Crown for the purposes of military security and foreign policy.

23

I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. Most of the old feudal titles that came with an estate of land bundled with the title died out long ago; the Wars of the Roses, for example, finished off many of the old nobility. Titles were handed out to lots of wealthy families beginning in the Tudor era and continuing through the Industrial Revolution, first to men who owned livestock (the Spencers, Diana’s family, got their start with sheep, e.g.) then later to the owners of factories or collieries or banks. Those families often had great landholdings, but the land was not given to them with the title; they had land because they were already rich. To perpetuate the wealth and status of the family, they often created entails (fee tail), a form of trust where each successive eldest son was a life tenant in the estate, but had no right to sell it. That kept the lands together in one chunk belonging to the head of the family.

If the line failed, however, and there was no son to inherit, then the wording of the original entail deed could pass possession of the land to a cousin, or a daughter, or all of the daughters collectively, or some other arrangement. This could result in cases where daughters inherited the land but the title went to a male relative, or even died out entirely if no male heir existed. Fee tail as a form of property ownership was abolished in England in the 1920s, and a similar concept in Scotland a few years ago, so now the peer who owns property can bequeath his property to whom he wishes, even as his peerage title descends in accordance with the original grant of title (often "heirs male of the body lawfully begotten’). [For estate planning and tax purposes, many of the great estates of England are bundled up into various sorts of trusts, however.]

In the earlier Middle Ages, the Isle of Mann was an independent kingdom; in fact, it stretched north to encompass most of the Hebrides as well. It lost land and power to the rising Kingdom of Scotland, however, and in 1399 the last King of Mann, an English nobleman, was executed by Henry IV for supporting his rival Richard II. Henry claimed the island by right of conquest, but fairly quickly turned around and granted it to the Stanley family as a feudal possession, one of the cases where land and title went together. The Stanleys and their heirs ruled as Lords of Mann for several centuries, owing homage and service (including two falcons at each coronation) to the English king. The Lord of Mann had expansive powers, including the power to create courts, appoint officials, and collect tax revenues as lord proprietor.

By the Isle of Mann Purchase Act 1765, Parliament bought out the heirs and merged the island into the Crown, making the monarch Lord of Mann, but Parliament did NOT make it part of England/Great Britain, so it continues today as a possession of the Crown, under the military protection of the UK but internally self-governing. It is not part of the EU customs area, doesn’t participate in the NHS, etc.

24

Here’s the thing- historically there hasn’t been a distinction between the monarch’s private holdings, the holdings of the Crown as an institution, and that which the government holds for the Royal Family. Until very recently that was all one in the same, as the monarch essentially embodied the government. It’s similar to how they can’t actually prosecute the Queen- criminal trials are "The Queen vs. ‘X’ ".

25

Interesting, thanks.

So if I follow, the Lancaster and Cornwall titles (land-title and title-title) are pretty much the only estates still tied to that feudal system, and for pretty much all other British nobility the two have been sundered?

Again, this is obviously by design of the government, so I presume at any time they could change these arrangements. Until then, they are what they are. But even then, the question would be whether to confiscate these estates, and then how much, and who then pays for (if any) the pomp and circumstance. Plus, the Queen and Charles have, I understand, diversified - so taking the lands would be one thing, going whole-hog socialist and seizing her Kentucky horse farm or Charles’ sausage factory (and all associated bank accounts, Sandringham, etc.) would be something else.

I presume the only significant other option would be that the estates pay taxes like any other corporation.

And it would be presumptuous for the government to help itself to all that and then tell the monarch “but we still expect you to devote yourself to your job 24-7 like a Pope…”. I assume any such move would be along with converting to a republic form of head of state, in which case the royal family would simply be another bunch of rich citizens with no special privileges.

26

Correct. I don’t think there are any other estates that are bound to the title anymore in the feudal manner.

There is the concept of Lord of the Manor; in some cases, buying a particular piece of ground that was created and designated a manor long ago entitles you to call yourself Lord (or Lady) of the Manor of _____. For example, you could have become Lord of the Manor of Arne if you’d snatched up this country estate a few years ago. However, lordships of the manor are not peerage titles in the first place.

Also, modern trusts can bind a piece of land for the benefit of a title-holder. For example, the late 11th Duke of Marlborough created a trust in the 1990s for Blenheim Palace and its associated estate of some 11,000 acres; his heir, the current 12th Duke, has apparently cleaned up his act but was at the time in and out of prison and had a serious drug problem, so his inheriting a £150 million estate outright would not have been a good idea for the estate or the duke’s well-being. The Duke of Westminster’s lands are mostly tied up in trusts for tax reasons. There is no heir to the title of Duke of Westminster (the current duke is in his 20s and unmarried, and there are no other male-line descendants of the first duke), so it is possible the title could die out, but the very extensive property holdings will continue support some other beneficiary of the trusts. (The duke has three sisters and a number of nieces and nephews, for starters.)

Both the Queen and the Prince of Wales voluntarily pay income tax on some portion of the revenues of their respective duchies, although I don’t believe it’s quite the same as how other corporations are taxed, and it’s not legally mandated. (After paying at least some tax for decades, I doubt the royals could stop paying without huge public outcry.)

27

There are still ancient aristocratic houses which have landholdings granted by the crown centuries ago. Vassalage no longer applies, but many of the ancient obligations exist, even if they’re mostly anachronistic and done either out of tradition or ignored. One quick example is the Duke of Norfolk.

As for the government taking an aristocratic family’s properties, whether the Queen or further down, each situation is going to be different, but all of them are going to be murky. For the oldest houses, there will be literally centuries worth of contracts between the landowners, the governments of the time, both national and local, and other bodies such as banks. In modern times there will be property titles, trusts, corporate structures, and who knows what else. Hell, probably squatter’s rights would come into consideration. Short of a totalitarian takeover, there’s far more involved in the property rights than the government stating they’re taking back what the crown once gave away.

28

The United Kingdom is a country of laws and courts with defined rights, while the legal status of the Duchy of Cornwall and Lancaster would be very complex if Parliament simply wished to entirely dispossess the Windsors, I’m quite certain that all of the family’s private holdings like the Queen’s race horses etc–couldn’t just be seized anymore than Parliament can just seize any ordinary person’s personal property. Parliament may be supreme but the system isn’t designed to allow it to act despotically with no respect to ordinary property rights etc.

Off topic but while I agree that the Queen can’t be tried in one of her own courts, she could certainly still be tried for a crime by a special commission created by Parliamentary act–as they did with Charles I.

29

Dispossesed monarchs in other European countries, or their relatives, have invoked the European Convention on Human Rights in claims to ownership of formerly royal properties, and have hauled the countries they formerly ruled before the European Court of Human Rights (with mixed success). Presumably if the occasion arose the Mountbatten-Windsors would have the same avenue open to them, and the knowledge that this is so might affect the actions taken in this regard by the Revolutionary Republican Government of Brexitland in the first place.

30

Well I’m not even talking the royal properties of state that are owned by the crown, but the properties that in an ordinary sense are owned privately by individual human persons; another posted had mentioned the Queen’s race horses specifically. Balmoral which I believe is also a privately owned family home would be in the same category.

It’s easiest to think of the royal properties in three categories:

  1. “The Crown”, or properties owned by the monarch “in right of the crown.” These properties are essentially properties of state, with the crown being the monarchical representation of the British state itself. Buckingham Palace, the Crown Jewels, and many other famous royal properties are owned by the monarch “in right of the crown.” There is a pretty strong argument if Britain were to ever become a Republic, these properties would rightfully become state properties of the new Republic, akin to the Federal government’s ownership of the White House in the United States. While in an ancient legal sense the monarch is a personification of the state and long, long ago the difference between crown holdings and personal royal holdings wouldn’t exist, in modern Britain these properties are essentially owned by the monarch as sort of a legal fiction for all intents and purposes. When Edward VIII abdicated there was no serious assertion he had any private claim to these properties, they were owned by the crown as the personification of the state, not by Edward the human, without the crown he had no claim to them.

  2. The Crown Estate - This is the most complicated piece of the British royal holdings in my opinion. The Crown estate is a public corporation that is neither part of the monarch’s “state holdings” like the Crown Jewels, Tower of London, Buckingham Palace etc, nor is it part of the monarch’s “private estate” like Balmoral, Sandringham, Elizabeth’s personal race horses and other sundries. While other posters have given a good overview of what the Crown Estate is, it’s worth understanding where it comes from.

Before 1760 the monarch had significant income generating properties that were controlled by the monarch and which the monarch had sole right to manage and from which they could take income. Much of this income was used to fund not only the monarch’s personal expenditures, but large portions of civil government. The reason for this has to do with how taxation worked in pre-modern Britain (and before that the dual monarchy of England/Scotland.) There were a number of special “standing dues” that the monarch had been granted over time and in perpetuity. The monarch also had significant holdings of their own that generated income. For anything else, direct taxes and revenue raising, the monarch had to get a law passed by Parliament that would approve the raising of a tax and the revenue needed.

In pre-modern times the monarchs weren’t huge fans of this because Parliament liked to basically squeeze the monarch any way they could. When the monarch had to go to Parliament for taxes they almost always suffered small erosion in their power; in matter of fact it was this power of the purse moreso than anything else (even the English Civil War when Parliament raised its own army and defeated the Royal armies), that gradually eroded the old powers of the monarch and lead to Britain being a constitutional Parliamentary government.

Traditional feudal dues, a limited number of customs duties, and other special fees that had been permanently granted to the monarch represented one source of income for the monarch. Over time most of these decreased and/or just stopped growing as the English and then British economy grew, and became essentially unsuitable for funding the government. Charles II was the last King that really tried to run things for very long stretches of time without consulting Parliament. Because of this he had limited abilities to raise revenue and he squeezed these traditional customs dues, and even resurrected some dormant feudal dues, and of course he had his crown income generating properties. This period was known as the “Personal Rule”, and you largely never saw it happen again because it only barely worked in the latter half of the 1600s, and with the growth of the British state and the lack of growth in these “traditional” sources of crown income it was just largely never tenable again.

As the 1700s progressed Parliament was always integral to governing and all of the monarch’s income generating holdings were basically reduced to funding a much more limited portion of the government, and mostly just the royal household (which encompassed all of the princelings and their homes etc, all the staff and all that.) By 1760 the crown was in serious risk of not even being able to fund those things from its own properties any longer, and there was fear the British monarchy might “devolve” in grandeur to being second rate. So a deal was struck where the crown just signed over all of the income in its estates to Parliament (becoming the crown estate), in exchange Parliament created the “civil list”, and would pay all of the monarch’s crown expenses from general revenue. Essentially from that point on the British taxpayer was funding most of the monarch’s personal expenses, like staff, maintenance on their homes etc. This deal was a good one for the monarchy for most of its history, as the civil list payments were usually far larger than the incomes generated from the properties.

Much of this estate was basically agricultural property and such, and was just not a sufficient source of income for most of the period in which the civil list existed. However by the 1970s the Crown Estate was being managed very professionally which helped its income situation quite a bit, and the explosion in value of British real estate around London directly aided the Crown Estate as a large portion of its holdings (by value) are in the London area. By the 2000s the Crown Estate was generating more income for Parliament than Parliament was paying to the monarch via the Civil List. By 2011 it was seen as politically/structurally desirable to get rid of the Civil List and replace it with Crown Estate funding. The 2011 Sovereign Grant Act gives the monarch a portion of the Crown Estate’s income to replace the civil list. There were a lot of justifications for this both political and practical. It probably helps the monarchy’s public standing a bit just because they can say a large chunk of their funding isn’t coming from direct taxes any longer. Additionally with the continued growth in the Crown Estate’s revenues it provided a good option for funding a large maintenance backlog for crown properties that had developed, that might have generated public drama if Parliament had allocated larger amounts of tax revenue to fix.

Now getting back to the idea of taking this away from the monarch if the country went to a Republic, that’d be an interesting and difficult legal issue I suspect. While Parliament has controlled the Crown Estate since 1760, the legal structure under which this happened has always maintained that the monarch actually owns the Crown Estate, in a different sense than the “State” owns Buckingham palace. These properties were historically the personal income generating properties of the sovereign, not simply artifacts of State built on order of Parliament. If I had to guess in a transition to a Republic there would probably be a “settlement” of sorts with the Crown Estate and the then-sovereign, what structure that would take I am unsure, but I suspect the sovereign would get some sort of payout.

  1. Finally the personal estate of the monarch is as a matter of law no different from any other British person’s private property. These is essentially no chance in my mind if Britain became a Republic that this property would be seized. Britain is a country with a strong historical respect for private property rights.
31

I guess then the £64,000 question is - what’s the governance of the Crown Estates corporation? Who controls the administrators who have made this a lucrative business?

So if I understand it…
The Crown Estates generate income that goes to the government. (to parliament)
The Civil Lists come from that income. (Is it sufficient or is other taxpayer money subsidizing it? The main question for taxpayers)

What items are covered by the civil lists, and what are considered the Queen’s personal property that she pays for out of her own private monies? I’m imagining things like the fancy horse-drawn carriage and jobs like rebuilding the interior seating of Westminster for coronations or marriages, flying the royals to meet and greet overseas, etc., probably even upkeep of Royal Yacht - this is probably covered by the Civil List?

There’s a lot more pomp in a monarchy than a presidency, so I can see the extra cost being relevant an should the Brits choose republic, much pomp and its expense unnecessary.

32

So how did the personal property of George V (including Balmoral and Sandringham), which presumably passed to Edward VIII after George died, end up with Bertie after the abdication? Was handing over the property part of the abdication deal, or was title actually still with Edward until he died?

33

The present queen’s father bought those estates from his brother, the one who abdicated.

34

Profit from the Crown estates that was ‘returned to the Government’ was £329.4million in 2017/18.

The Civil List has been replaced by the Sovereign Grant, and it’s a set % of the profits of the Crown Estates - 15%.

The Queen has a page on the subject on her website.

The Grant doesn’t cover the costs of security, but it does things like travel, maintenance of royal (not private) palaces, clothes for state occasions, putting on state banquets and the like.

35

I admit I’m not au courant on the Queen’s business finances but IIRC she’s a pretty shrewd judge of horseflesh and her horses do rather well at the races and then earn top dollar (er, sterling) in stud fees later. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she makes a tidy profit on the gee-gees.

36

Sandringham and Balmoral were never Crown properties; they were purchased by Queen Victoria with personal funds (they fell into category 3, personal property), and Bertie had to purchase them from his brother after the abdication.

The Commissioners of the Crown Estate are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. In practice, the Treasury decides who will be appointed, and the Commissioners publish an annual report and are answerable to Parliament. The current chairman, Robin Budenberg, has had a long career in banking; prior to be appointed to the Crown Estate, he was chief executive of the company set up to manage the Treasury’s shares in banks they had to bail out during the financial crisis.

The Sovereign Grant (replacement for the Civil List) covers the expenses of the Occupied Royal Palaces–such as Buckingham, parts of Kensington, Windsor Castle-- as well as the Royal Mews (the horses and carriages). Historic Royal Palaces is an independent charity that maintains places such as Hampton Court, the state apartments at Kensington, and the Tower of London. The Royal Yacht is gone; decommissioned in 1997, it’s now a museum ship in Scotland. The Queen has occasionally leased a private yacht to sail around the Scottish isles during her summer holiday, but that is from her private funds, as are the operating expenses of her private residences, Balmoral and Sandringham. Royal travel monies depend on the purpose; private holidays are private money, e.g., while an official state visit or major diplomatic tour may involve a combination of funds from both the British (Sovereign Grant and Foreign Office) and host governments. The costs of a royal marriage are primarily private (the government pays for security, e.g.), while the last coronation was paid primarily from a separate government fund rather than the Civil List.

Depends on the republic, I suppose. Compare the pomp and circumstance of the French Republic (the cavalry of the Republican Guard, holding state banquets at Versailles, etc.) to the Belgian monarchy, e.g., and I think you’d reach a different conclusion.

37

Hopefully he got a good deal since Edward stuck Bertie with a job he (from any reported I have read) really didn’t want.

38

The biographers of Edward VIII, George VI, and the Queen Mother all agree the negotiations were quite acrimonious. Edward kept pleading poverty, since he had received no cash from his father’s estate; Bertie found out only later that Edward was sitting on a cash hoard accumulated during his tenure as Duke of Cornwall. Also, Edward demanded an annual annuity to cover his expenses, and the Prime Minister was unwilling to risk a clash with the Labour Party, so Bertie had to cover that out of his own funds. Fifty-some years later, the Queen Mother was still complaining about how “terribly short” Bertie was left after buying out his brother.

39

I read someplace that the queen hated or at least disliked the Duke of Windsor, in part for abdicating but also because she blamed him for her father’s death (at only 56). I think the idea was the stress of being king contributed to an early death.

40

The Queen Mother certainly blamed Edward and “that woman” for her husband’s early death; she is alleged to have said that the two people who caused the most trouble in her life were Wallis Simpson and Adolf Hitler, in that order.