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Early parliaments increasingly brought together social classes resembling the estates of the realm of continental Europe: the landed aristocracy (barons and knights), the clergy, and the towns. Historian John Maddicott points out that "the main division within parliament was less between lords and commons than between the landed and all others ...
In the early period the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords of the mormaers (later earls) and toísechs (later thanes), but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships. [111]
A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution, organization, or state, in which members have a share of power. [2] Modern democracies are characterized by two capabilities of their citizens that differentiate them fundamentally from earlier forms of government: to intervene in society and have their sovereign (e.g., their representatives) held ...
In 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged to create the Kingdom of Great Britain, and in 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland joined to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The British monarch was the nominal head of the vast British Empire, which covered a quarter of the world's land area at its greatest extent in 1921.
Between 1867 and 1885, the extension of voting rights for men was introduced, laying the groundwork for mass political democracy in the UK. Among other laws, the Ballot Act (1872), the Corrupt Practices Act (1883), and the Redistribution Act (1885) were issued. [13]
Governors were often placed in an untenable position. Their official instructions from London demanded that they protect the Crown's power—the royal prerogative—from usurpation by the assembly; at the same time, they were also ordered to secure more colonial funding for Britain's wars against France. In return for military funding, the ...
The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 [28] confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success. During its first 100 years of operation, the focus of the British East India Company had been trade, not the building of an empire in India.
A History of England. Period 4: Growth of Democracy: Victoria 1837–1880 (1902) online 608pp; highly detailed older political narrative A History of England: Period V. Imperial Reaction, Victoria, 1880‒1901 (1904) online; Brock, M. G. "Politics at the Accession of Queen Victoria" History Today (1953) 3#5 pp 329–338 online.