On This Day: January 1st - New Year's Day

Charles II in a portrait by Philippe de Champaigne during his exile, c. 1653

     In 1651, Charles II was crowned King of Scots at Scone Palace in Perthshire, Scotland.

     His father Charles I had been tried and executed in England, resulting in the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of a republic. In Scotland however, Charles II was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland, and a Scottish army invaded England to restore him to his throne. But after this momentous occasion - the last coronation to be held in Scotland - Charles and his Royalist allies were defeated by Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarian New Model Army at the Battle of Worcester in September. Charles escaped into exile in continental Europe, and Cromwell conquered Scotland and Ireland to make them part of the republican Commonwealth, and was later made Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland – becoming a military dictator. Upon his death in 1658, he was succeeded by his son Richard, who lacked the political and military backing his father had, and resigned after eight months in office. In 1660, the Protectorate and Commonwealth were abolished, and Charles II was invited back to Britain to preside over the restoration of the monarchy in his three kingdoms.

James Stuart in a portrait by Antonio David, c. 1720.

     In 1766, James Francis Edward Stuart died at the age of 77 in Rome.

     James Stuart was the son James VII of Scotland & II of England and Ireland, who had been deposed during the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 because of his Catholicism. In 1701, he became pretender to the throne upon the death of his father and attempted to regain it during the Jacobite Uprising in 1715. When it seemed that the Jacobite's had the upper hand following the indecisive Battle of Sheriffmuir, James landed in Scotland, and made his way to Scone Palace, the traditional coronation site for the King of Scots, where he announced his forthcoming coronation as James VIII & III. But his shy and cold manner in public failed to inspire confidence amongst his supporters, and the harsh winter only made matters worse. With the British Army in pursuit, James was pushed back to the Scottish coast, and eventually fled back to France. He would go on to live out the rest of his days (known as the Old Pretender) as a devout Catholic in Rome at the grace-and-favor of the Vatican.

George III, the first monarch of the United Kingdom

     In 1801, the Union with Ireland Act 1800, an act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, and the Act of Union (Ireland) 1800, an act passed by the Parliament of Ireland came into effect, which formally merged the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

     Both countries had previously shared a monarch in an personal union, but they were now governed as a single country by the same parliament - the new Parliament of the United Kingdom in London at the Palace of Westminster, where over 100 Irish representatives were sent to join their English, Scottish, and Welsh colleagues.

     George III, now King of the United Kingdom, took the opportunity to drop his nominal title as King of France, which had been used by English and British monarchs since Edward III of England to signify their claims to the French throne (see post about Henry VI being crowned King of France). The French Revolution had brought down the monarchy, and so the title had become irrelevant anyway.

Queen Victoria being handed the Indian crown by Benjamin Disraeli.

     In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India at a Durbar in Delhi.

     India had been under the control of the British East India Company, which been created for the purpose of trading with India and East Indies (now largely Indonesia). Following a revolt in 1857, India became directly governed by the British Crown, though no official title had been bestowed to Queen Victoria.

     It was Benjamin Disraeli, Victoria's 7th British Prime Minister, who pushed the Royal Title's Act of 1876 through Parliament, which bestowed the title - previously belonging to the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II - to the 58 year old Queen. The title would be passed down to each successive monarch through George VI, who was the last Emperor of India and presided over the country's independence in 1947.

Royal Dates for December 31st

     I was unable to put these events into a formal posting, so I am going to briefly add them here.

     In 1660, Louis XIV of France granted the title of Duke of Normandy to James Stuart, Duke of York, who would become James VII & II in 1685

      In 1720, Charles Edward Stuart was born in Rome. He was the son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender to the British throne, and made a final attempt to seize the throne in 1745 which failed. He is popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Young Pretender.

     In 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of Canada.