Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
That's not entirely accurate. Great Britain may have had a king, but it was also, to a large degree, a republic. The king's power was limited by English law (going back all the way to the Magna Carta in 1215). England had an elected law-making body (the House of Commons). English subjects had rights guaranteed by law (i.e. the English Bill of Rights, 1689). The English Civil War established the primacy of the Parliamentary system. By 1776, the English monarch, although political more powerful than today, was essentially a figurehead.
|
A minor piece of trivia, but the English Civil War also defined the English Army as being under the control of Parliament not the Crown. That in turn passed onto the British Army following the Act of Union between Scotland and England in 1707 as a result of which whilst we have a Royal Navy and a Royal Air Force we do
not have a Royal Army - the Army is only known as the British Army (although some Regiments and Corps have Royal in their title, e.g. the Royal Artillery).