The cookie sheet idea came to me as I was I doing a lot of cookie baking.
But perhaps cookie baking isn’t a close enough parallel for this discussion.
There were separate and independent kingdoms in England and Scotland, with separate kings, parliaments, laws, courts, religions - everything. The king of England was also King of Ireland, which was technically a different kingdom, but was dependent on England.
In 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I of England died, her nearest heir was King James VI of Scotland, so he became King James I of England as well. However England and Scotland continued to be separate countries. There was no United Kingdom.
The heirs of James VI/I continued to be Kings of both England and Scotland (and Ireland) until 1707, when the Kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Queen Anne, who had until then been Queen of England and Scotland, became the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. She continued to be Queen of Ireland, which was a separate kingdom, now dependent on Great Britain.
In 1801 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. George III was the monarch on the throne at the time.
England has never become Great Britain. Great Britain is the name of the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales.
This reopens an argument which has been debated here before.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=60002&highlight=United+Kingdom+Great+Britain+style (the important bit comes towards the bottom of the thread)
Note the different wording in the relevant clause of the 1707 Act of Union (posted by Northern Piper in the earlier thread) and in the equivalent clause of the 1800 Act of Union (posted by Osiris above). This was why the phrase ‘United Kingdom’ was not added to the royal style until 1801. After 1707 Queen Anne had just been ‘Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland’. In the spirit of true SDMB pedantry, I second Orisis’s answer.
Anne’s title from 1701 may have been “Queen of Great Britain” rather than “Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain” (Just as Louis XIV was “King of France” and not “King of the Kingdom of France”) but she was, in fact, the Queen of a country called Great Britain and that country was a united kingdom, i.e. one formed by the union of two previously existing kingdoms.
Similarly I am pretty certain that George III and many of his successors styled themselves “King (or Queen) of Great Britain and Ireland” even after the Act of Union of 1801 united the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The practice of using a style such as “Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” is actually quite recent. In fact I think the present Queen may be the first to use this style.
But the OP did not ask "who first used the title “king (or queen) of the United Kingdom” but “who was the first monarch of the United Kingdom”? The answer is, if you are referring to the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Queen Anne, and if you are referring to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, King George III.
If yu look at the USA from, say the moon, the most easterly and westerly points will be the highest point in the USA, as it passes in and out of view.
. . . and, if you are speaking of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, the answer is Queen Maria (1815).
The official royal style was amended to ‘By the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland king, defender of the faith…’ by a proclamation of 1 January 1801. See Sir F. Maurice Powicke and E. B. Fryde (ed.), Handbook of British Chronology (2nd edition, Royal Historical Society, 1961), p. 43.
Consider now the opening sentence of the 1707 Act of Union.
How one interprets this depends on how one modernizes the capitalization. This seems the more natural reading.
Now contrast this with the 1800 Act which specifically says that the kingdoms are to ‘be united into one kingdom, by the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’. That the royal style was then altered is very strong evidence that this was assumed to be a change of name. I would be most surprised if you can find any evidence that the term ‘United Kingdom’ was officially used before then.
The OP asked ‘who was the first Monarch of the United Kingdom?’. My point is that there was no such place as ‘the United Kingdom’, whether in law or common parlance, before 1801.
I have no view on which is the most easterly of the States of the USA.
. . . and, if you are speaking of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the answer is Willem I (1815).
In fact, quite a lot of countries appear to have used the official description “United Kingdom” at one time or another in their histories.
Hmm, reading APB’s (Thank you APB) post and first quote makes me think I spoke correctly. What happened in 1707 was the term ‘Great Britain’ given a second definition. Before it referred to the island, after it could also be used to refer to the kingdom.
Yeah, my (admittedly anal) nitpick was you saying that England “became Great Britain” - that’s like saying “Alaska became the United States in 1959”.
It was England then, and it’s England now. What happened is that England became part of Great Britain.
I see what you were saying now. Kinda rude to Scotland saying it the way I did too.
Hi APB
I stand corrected in relation to the Royal Title. But this page http://www.regiments.org/milhist/regtintro/hmtitle.htm suggests that the royal title and the name/description of the kingdom do not always coincide. In particular between 1927 and 1952 the royal title did not include the words “United Kingdom”.
The act of union passed by the Scottish Parliament in 1707 (http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/act.html) consistently refers to the new kingdom as “the United Kingdom of Great Britain” in terms which suggest that “United” is not simply an adjective inserted where necessary for clarification, but part of what is (expected) to be the common way of describing the new kingdom.
I’m unable with a quick google search to find other primary sources which use the term “United Kingdom” between 1701 and 1801; I find a lot of modern sources using the term “United Kingdom” with reference to the 1707-1801 period and, interestingly, many of them are written from a Scottish perspective. Perhaps the term “United Kingdom” was (and may still be) used more in Scotland than in England with reference to Great Britain.
Egbert was the first monarch of a united England, IIRC.
James VI of Scots and I of England was the first monarch, in 1603, of a united England, Scotland, and Wales, and referred to his combined realms as “Great Britain” but the kingdoms were not formally united into one until 1707, under Anne. Monarchs from about 1300 on considered themselves Kings of Ireland, a separate realm.
The term “United Kingdom” was adopted to describe the union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800; therefore George III would be the first King of the United Kingdom. When Ireland resumed its independence in 1922 as the Irish Free State, George V became the first monarch of the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
<< But if you were to shrink down the U.S. so it could fit on a cookie sheet and looked at it that way, the easternmost point would be in Maine. >>
The cookie analogy would seem to be definitive. After all, yeast is yeast and west is west…
United States Geological Survey. I was just testing to see if anyone would notice. Yeah, that’s it.
UDS, you’re about the form of the royal style between 1927 and 1953, but I still think you’re wrong about the 1707 Acts of Union.
As with the English version of the 1707 Act, one’s interpretation of the Scottish version depends on how one modernizes the capitals. The version given in the page you cite above has been modernized; the decision to retain capitals for ‘United Kingdom’ was one made by whoever edited the text and should not be taken for granted. The following page (taken from the website of the Scottish Parliament Project which is in the process of producing a new edition of the acts of the old Scottish Parliament) gives some idea of the difference.
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~scotparl/Union.htm
As with the English Act, the most relevant clause of the Scottish Act is the one that specifies that Scotland and England were to ‘be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN’. That it goes on to speak of ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain’ (or ‘the united kingdom of Great Britain’) does seem to me to be a matter of clarification, in part because the term ‘Great Britain’ had occasionally been used in official contexts as a name for England and Scotland. This was an attempt by the draftsmen to exclude any ambiguity, not a decision to rename the country.
The idea that England and Scotland became ‘the United Kingdom…’ in 1707 depends on a questionable reading of the Acts of Union for which no evidence has yet been produced and which, if correct, seems to have been ignored in 1800 when care was taken to specify the change to ‘the United Kingdom…’.
Hi APB
I accept that there is an important distinction between the 1707 legislation and the 1801 legislation, in that the latter explicitly adopts a formal name (“the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”) while the former does not. There is a certain logic here. From 1707 Great Britan was a “united kingdom” (no capitals) in the sense of a union of two formerly separate kingdoms. Queen Anne and her successors could be titled “Queen (or King) of Great Britain”, and no possibility of confusion could arise; similarly with expressions like “Parliament of Great Britain”, “Great Seal of Great Britain” and so forth.
However from 1801 the new kingdom is called “Great Britain and Ireland”. This expression could describe two separate kingdoms, and to avoid this misreading the name “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” is adopted, with consequences for the royal style and for expressions like “Parliament of the United Kingdom”. In other words, because a name derived purely from geography could describe one political entity or two, a political description is incorporated to make it clear that a single entity is involved.
This suggests that there was less need to call the 1707-1800 entity a “united kingdom”, because the purely geographic term did not suggest two kingdoms. However where it was necessary to make the point that a single kingdom was involved, or to distinguish the new kingdom from the predecessor kingdoms, the term “united kingdom” (capitalised or not) was used. We have seen this in both the English and Scottish Acts of Union. The term “kingdom of Great Britain” or simply “Great Britain” could have been used, but the term “united kingdom” was often chosen instead, especially in the Scottish Act; I suspect we would find it used elsewhere if we looked, but the need to use it would have arisen less often than after 1800, and it was not embodied in a formal name adopted by statute; no name was adopted in this way.
The fact remains that Great Britain was a united kingdom from 1707, in the sense of being a union of two previously separate kingdoms. It was on at least some occasions so described or so called, and I suspect if the term “united kingdom” had been used at any time between 1701 and 1800 nobody would have been in much doubt what was being referred to. Anne was the first monarch of that united kingdom. George III was the first monarch of the second united kingdom, which was the first kingdom to adopt a name explicitly incorporating the words “United Kingdom”.
The British monarch was also styled King (or Queen) of France from Edward III until (I believe) George IV, who finally gave up the far-fetched title.
Far fetched my ass! It’s still ours, dammit! What do you think we’ve kept the Channel Islands for? The Islanders are just biding their time 'til we give the word… 