﻿GREAT BRITAIN. 



QBEAT BRITAIN. 



.Mw vf Plamtagtrntt : — 



ll»4 



iisa 



IIM 

 UK 



H»nry II. 

 Kichurd I. 

 John, 

 nnirj in. 





iso; 



ISIJ 

 1S77 



Edward I. 

 Edward II. 

 Edward 111. 

 Illchard U. 



UM 



MIS 



Henry IV. 



Henry V. 



Uott of LanetuUr : — 



MIS Henry VI. 







NouK of York.— 





U61 

 HU 



Edward n-. 

 Edward V. 



1483 

 ffoute of THdor: — 



KiehardlU 



I4SS 

 \H1 



noiry VII. 

 Henry VIU. 

 Edward VI. 





an 

 an 



IS»8 



Jane Gr«y. 



Mary. 



ElUabeth. 



Hmue of Stwui : — 

 16M JanmL | 162S Charlea I. 



Chmmonweaith, from the Execution of Chatiei I. in 1049 :- 

 16SS Oliver Cromwell, Proteefor. 

 I6S0 Richard Cromwell, ditto. 



Jloiue of Stuart, ratored : — 

 16*0 Charles II. | 168.5 James II. 



IIOHie of Orange: — 

 1689 William III., with Mary II., till 1695. 



HovM of Stuart, rettored : — 



1702 Anne. 







ffoute of Hanwer: — 



17U 

 17J7 

 1760 



George I. 

 George II. 

 George III. 





1820 George IV. 

 18S0 ■William IV. 

 1837 Victoria. 



Government and Administration. — The English form of government 

 U generally called a limited or constitutional hereditary monnrchy ; 

 but this is an imperfect and inaccurate description. The sovereign 

 power may be considered as residing in three bodies or estates — 

 King, Lords, and Commons. These three estates constitute the 

 Parliament, and the concurrence of these three limbs or members of 

 the sovereign power is necessary for enacting, annulling, or altering 

 any law. The House of Lords consists of the temporal peers of 

 Kugland, the elective peers of Scotland and Ireland, the bishops of 

 England, and four Irish lords spiritual, who sit by rotation of sessions. 

 The House of Lords is also the Supreme Court of Appeal for Great 

 Britam and Ireland. 



Sinoe the Union with Ireland in 1801 the House of Commons has 

 eompriaed 658 members, of whom there are — 



For England, — Coonty Members 

 TJniTeraitiet 

 Cities and Boroughs 



Wales, — Coonty Members 



Cities and Boroughs 



Scotland, — Conntr Members 



Cities and Boronghs 



Ireland, — Connty Members 

 University . 

 Cttim and Boroogba 



143 



4 



324 



471 



IS 

 14 



— 29 

 30 



23 



— 31 

 64 



2 

 3S 



— IDS 



The admidlatration is entrusted by the sovereign to certain great 

 officers of state, usually from 12 to 14 in number, who together form 

 what ia called the Cabinet. The First Lord of the Treasury is generally 

 ooiMiderad the Prime Minister. The usual members of the Cabinet 

 an, beaidea the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 

 Lord President of the Council, the I/ord High Chancellor of England, 

 the lMn\ Privy Seal, the Secretaries of .State, the First Lord of the 

 Admiralty, the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the 

 Board of Control for the Affairs of India, the Secretary at War, and 

 the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In June 1864, in con- 

 wqaaooe of the preaiure of the neoesnuy arrangements for carrying 

 on the war with Runia, a Secretary of State for the War Depart- 

 ment was appointed, making in all four principal Secretaries of State — 

 Home, Foreign, Colonies, and War. 



The superior courts for the administration of justice are the High 

 Court of Chancery ; the Court of Exchequer ; the Court of Queen's 

 Bench, which is the highest Common-l/aw and Criminal Court in the 

 kingdom ; and the Court of Common Pleas. Besides these there are 

 many inferior courts with local jurisdiction. Courts of assize are 

 held by the judges in every oounty of England and Wales, for which 

 purpoae the oountry is divided into eight circuit*. The judges of the 

 superior courts are in all cases ap|>ointod by the crown for life, and 

 are removable only upon an addraai from Parliament to the crown. 



England and Wales are ecclesiastically divided into two provinces 

 — York and Canterbury — coutaiuing 2S bishoprics or dioceses, besides 

 that of the Isle of Man. Every parish is under the spiritual charge 

 of a clergyman, who is either rector, vioar, or perpetual curate. 

 Each parish has the management of various matters relating to its 

 own ooncema, the inliabitauts meeting together in a body, or by a 

 oeriain number selected from the genenu body, for the purpose of 

 levying rates for the support of the poor and for other local purposes. 

 Certain oflSoers are chosen annually by the ratepayers to superintend 

 the distribution of these funds. The government of the northern 

 part of the islaml will be noticed in the article Scotladd. 



Language. — 1. The Irish language. This ia generally admitted to be 

 the purest form of the Celtic speech, which appears to have at one time 

 been common to all the inhabitants of both islands. The Irish, as is 

 well known, is still a spoken langtiage. The oldest Irish manuscript, a 

 collection of bardic legends called the ' Psalter of Cashel,' compiled 

 by Cormac M'Culinan, bishop of Cashel and king of Hunster, is 

 believed to be no older than the latter part of the 9th oeqtury; 

 but some of the bardic compositions that have been preee r red 

 in this and other records are supposed to be of much higher 

 antiquity ; though doubtless, if they are so, they must have been 

 greatly altered from their original form before being committed to 

 writing. The national chronicles pretend to furnish a list of the 

 names of the beu-ds from about the first century of the Christian 

 era ; and some of the fragments of their compositions that have 

 come down to us are assigned to so early a date as the 6th century. 

 Of the remains of the ancient Irish literature, however, by far the 

 most valuable are the prose records of Tigemach and the other 

 annalista, which appear to have been written in the 11th and 12th 

 centuries, but profess to be compiled from docimionts of much earlier 

 date. The natives of Ireland who in modem times have written 

 either in Latin or in English, and among whom are some of the most 

 distinguished names of which our literature has to boast, must be 

 considered, in their literary capacity at least, as Englishmen. 



2. The Gaelic, or Celtic of Scotland. This is also still a spoken 

 language. It is a sister dialect of the Irish, which it so much 

 resembles that the Bible aud a few other books in Irish were, till 

 very uecently, the only printed literature which the Gael of ScotJand 

 possessed. It is believed that not eveu a manuscript in Givelio exists 

 which is older than the 16th century, although some of the compo- 

 sitions in verse which have been preserved in the language may be 

 of greater antiquity. The celebrated Poems of Ossian appear to be 

 founded upon the compositions of Irish bards who lived in the 11th 

 and 12th centuries. The Gaelic originals, so far as they exist, of the 

 productions published by Hacpherson under this title, have been 

 printed with a literal Latin translation by the Higbliuid Society of 

 Scotland ; and besides a few grammars and* dictionaries, there now 

 also exist in a printed form Gaelic translations of the Bible, of the 

 Psalms iu verse, aud of a very few English works, mostly religious. 



3. The Mauks, or language of the Isle of Man. This is another 

 dialect of the Celtia Formerly, at least, the language of the northern 

 half of the island more resembled the Scottish Gaelic ; that of the 

 south, the Irish. (See Letter from John Meryk, bishop of the see, 

 in Camden's ' Britannia.') The Bible, the English Prayer-Book, and a 

 few religious tracts are almost the only works that have been printed 

 in the Mankn. 



4. The Welsh. The remains which we possess of the ancient Welsh 

 literature are very considerable, both in quantity and value. They 

 consist chiefly of the poems of the bard^ of the collections of verses 

 called Triads, of the Bruts, or Chronicles, and of some early laws. 

 The four principal and most ancient Welsh bards are Aneurin, 

 Tali&<in, Llywarch Heu, and Merlin, or Merdhin, the Caledonian, who 

 are all believed to have flourished in the Gth century. The other 

 ancient bardic remains extend over the five followiug centuries. The 

 Triads are collections of metrical triplets, for the most part comme- 

 morative of historical events, which appear in their present form to 

 be a compilation of the 13th century, though founded ou earlier 

 records now lost. The remains of the ancient WeUh laws, the most 

 important of which are those enacted by Howel Dha, prince of South 

 Wales, in the early part of the 10th century, have been printed by 

 Wotton in his ' Leges Wallica;,' folio, London, 1730. The Bible and 

 some religious works have been translated into Welsh in modern times. 



6. The Cornish. The Cornish was a spoken language little more 

 than a century ago, but is believed to be now altogether lost, with the 

 exception of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed (which are given by 

 Camden), and a short vocabulary collected by Dr. Borlase in his 

 'Antiquities of Cornwall,' folio, 1754 and 1769. From these 

 specimens it appears to have been a sister dialect of the Welsh. 

 If any literary compositions ever existed in Cornish they have wholly 

 perished. 



6. The Norse. This is the name given to the tongue that used to 

 be spoken by the people of the Orkneys, and that perhaps is not 

 yet altogether extinct there. It is, or was, a Gothic dialect ; but we 

 are not aware that any composition in it exists, with the exception of 

 a version of the Lord's Prayer, first given by the Hev. Dr. James 

 Wallace, a clergyman of these islands, in his 'Account of the Orkneys,' 

 8vo., London, 1700. 



7. The Anglo-Saxon. If we disregard the opinion which supposes 



