A mnemonic verse listing monarchs ruling in England since William the Conqueror was traditionally used by British schoolchildren in the era when rote learning formed a major part of the curriculum.
Various versions of the verse exist. One version is: [1]
A slightly shorter version that is sometimes used is: [1]
These lists omit several disputed monarchs (including Empress Matilda, Henry the Young King, Louis VIII of France, Philip II of Spain and Lady Jane Grey), and do not mention the Commonwealth of England.
Both of these versions were written before the death of Elizabeth II in 2022. The current monarch is Charles III, the successor to Elizabeth II.
Alan Bennett quotes and adapts the verse in his 1968 play Forty Years On . The scene with the verse is set during the Second World War, before the accession of Elizabeth II, and Bennett's version stops at Victoria. [2]
The 1991 film King Ralph includes a brief section of the verse.[ citation needed ]
The Monarchs' Song from the CBBC TV series Horrible Histories lists the monarchs of England and has some phrases in common with the traditional verse. The original version was released in 2011 which stopped at Elizabeth II with the verse "And Queen Liz two completes the mix!". An updated version was released on May 2, 2023 (four days before the coronation), adding the verse "Not quite. Now there's me, Charles three!". [3]
The King's Singers include a 12-minute song "A Rough Guide to the Royal Succession (It's just one damn King after another…)" by Paul Drayton, on their 2012 album Royal Rhymes and Rounds. This song bears no relation to the mnemonic verses except for its subject matter, a chronology of the monarchy starting with pre-Norman kings "With names that no-one can spell / Cerdic and Ceolwulf / Egbert and Athelstan / And Ethelbald as well." [4]
A different mnemonic is used to remember the sequence of English and British royal houses or dynasties.
The initial letters of which give the royal houses:
This list of royal houses differs from the views of many historians. For example, Lancaster and York are considered cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, and the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was renamed as Windsor in 1917.
The House of Tudor was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. The current monarch is King Charles III, who ascended the throne on 8 September 2022, upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Regnal numbers are ordinal numbers used to distinguish among persons with the same name who held the same office. Most importantly, they are used to distinguish monarchs. An ordinal is the number placed after a monarch's regnal name to differentiate between a number of kings, queens or princes reigning the same territory with the same regnal name.
St James's Palace is the most senior royal palace in London, the capital of the United Kingdom. The palace gives its name to the Court of St James's, which is the monarch's royal court, and is located in the City of Westminster in London. Although no longer the principal residence of the monarch, it is the ceremonial meeting place of the Accession Council, the office of the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, and the London residence of several members of the royal family.
Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire was an English noblewoman, noted for being the mother of Anne Boleyn and as such the maternal grandmother of Elizabeth I of England. The eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and his first wife Elizabeth Tilney, she married Thomas Boleyn sometime in the later 15th century. Elizabeth became Viscountess Rochford in 1525 when her husband was elevated to the peerage, subsequently becoming Countess of Ormond in 1527 and Countess of Wiltshire in 1529.
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
From the 1340s to the 19th century, excluding two brief intervals in the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England and Ireland also claimed the throne of France. The claim dates from Edward III, who claimed the French throne in 1340 as the sororal nephew of the last direct Capetian, Charles IV. Edward and his heirs fought the Hundred Years' War to enforce this claim, and were briefly successful in the 1420s under Henry V and Henry VI, but the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, was ultimately victorious and retained control of France, except for Calais and the Channel Islands. Following the Hundred Years War, English and British monarchs continued to call themselves kings of France, and adopted the French fleur-de-lis as their coat of arms, quartering the arms of England in positions of secondary honour. This continued until 1802, by which time France no longer had any monarch, having become a republic. The Jacobite claimants, however, did not explicitly relinquish the claim.
The Queen's Beasts are ten heraldic statues representing the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II, depicted as the Royal supporters of England. They stood in front of the temporary western annexe to Westminster Abbey for the Queen's coronation in 1953. Each of the Queen's Beasts consists of a heraldic beast supporting a shield bearing a badge or arms of a family associated with the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II. They were commissioned by the British Ministry of Works from the sculptor James Woodford, who was paid the sum of £2,750 for the work. They were uncoloured except for their shields at the coronation. They are now on display in the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
The Vigil of the Princes refers to occasions when members of the British royal family have "stood guard" during the lying in state of one of their relatives during or as part of a British state or ceremonial funeral. This occurred for King George V in 1936, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002, and for Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. During the first two of these occasions, only male members of the British royal family joined the vigil. In 2022 however, Anne, Princess Royal, took part alongside her three brothers in vigils for their mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
In modern heraldry, a royal cypher is a monogram or monogram-like device of a country's reigning sovereign, typically consisting of the initials of the monarch's name and title, sometimes interwoven and often surmounted by a crown. Such a cypher as used by an emperor or empress is called an imperial cypher. In the system used by various Commonwealth realms, the title is abbreviated as 'R' for 'rex' or 'regina'. Previously, 'I' stood for 'imperator' or 'imperatrix' of the Indian Empire.
British history provides several opportunities for alternative claimants to the English and later British Crown to arise, and historical scholars have on occasion traced to present times the heirs of those alternative claims.
St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in England is a castle chapel built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a Royal Peculiar, and the Chapel of the Order of the Garter. St George's Chapel was founded in the 14th century by King Edward III and extensively enlarged in the late 15th century. It is located in the Lower Ward of the castle.
The mistresses of Henry VIII included many notable women between 1509 and 1536. They have been the subject of biographies, novels and films.
Since William the Conqueror claimed the English throne, succession has been determined by bequest, battle, primogeniture, and parliament.