Why The Queen Does Not Appear on the “Rich List"

     A recent survey by Hurun Global Rich List was published, and it contains 56 people living in the UK who are billionaires. Among the monied group are well-known names such as Sir Richard Branson and the Duke of Westminster, but where is the Queen? After all, she's the Queen and has to be the richest person in the UK or at least amongst the top ten, right?

     In that light, you may have heard (or read) that Queen Elizabeth II has a net worth in the billions and that she owns one-sixth of the world's surface. So why is she not on the rich list?

The Queen is not as wealthy as you may believe.

     The answer is that such figures fail to make a distinction between the Queen's personal wealth as an individual and the assets held in trust by her as the sovereign of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms.

     Elizabeth II's personal fortune is not officially known, but recent estimates have placed it at around $300-500 million. This figure includes only the assets held by her as a private individual - including her personal estates of Balmoral and Sandringham (which include revenue-generating working farms) and privately-held heirlooms such as jewellery, artwork, and her grandfather's stamp collection.

     These are assets that Elizabeth would still control even if she were not Queen, and she can sell them at anytime (except for some property that may be kept in accordance to will instructions). The important thing to remember is that these assets are not handed down to the beneficiaries by virtue of being monarch; they are handed down in a personal capacity outside of the constitutional realm.

The Sandringham Estate is privately owned by the Royal family.

     For example, when George V died in 1936, Edward VIII inherited Sandringham and Balmoral because they were willed to him by his father, as opposed to Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, which he obtained because of his role as monarch. When Edward abdicated that year, Windsor, Buckingham, and the other state-owned residences automatically passed to his brother, George VI, who had to purchase Sandringham and Balmoral from Edward so that they would stay within the Royal family.

     In private terms, the Queen's wealth - albeit sizable - is peanuts compared to other fortunes in Britain and across the world. She does not even make it to the billionaire's list.

     So then, what about the supposed billions under Her Majesty's throne?

     Those "billions" are in reference to assets nominally held by the monarch but are not private property, and cannot be owned or sold by the monarch. These entities are the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, the Royal Collection, and the occupied royal residences.

     The Crown Estate is a property portfolio owned by the Crown, but held in trust and governed by Act of Parliament. It is one of the largest property owners in the United Kingdom, with a total worth 

Regent Street is among the properties
owned by the Crown Estate.

of £8.1 billion as of June 2013. Originally, the lands of the Crown Estate and their revenues belonged to monarch, but under George III in 1760, the revenues were surrendered to Parliament in return for a fixed annual payment to fund the Civil List - the official income of the monarchy. Today, the Crown Estate owns various properties throughout the UK, including 356,000 acres of rural land, urban properties (including significant parts of Central London such as Regent Street), more than half of the UK's seashore, as well as the Ascot Racecourse and Windsor Great Park. Surplus revenue from the Estate are paid to the Treasury and go toward funding the UK Government. In 2012, a new financial arrangement was implemented under which the monarch receives 15% of the annual Crown Estate revenues as a single payment - known as the Sovereign Grant - in place of the Civil List (and three other sources of official government funding) for the operation of the monarchy.

     The Duchy of Lancaster is another land portfolio - worth £429 million as of March 2013. It was created for John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III of England in 1362, who also became Duke of Lancaster. When John's eldest son ascended to the throne as Henry IV, he declared that the Duchy be a separate inheritance 

Standard of the Duchy of Lancaster.

from the estates owned by the Crown. The result is that unlike the Crown Estate, the Duchy's revenues do not go the UK Treasury. Instead, they are distributed to the Privy Purse, which is the personal income of the British monarch and subject to income tax. But in similar fashion to the Estate, the Duchy is not personally owned by the monarch, and is instead held in trust for the benefit of the monarch. Today, it covers 46,000 acres of land (including 190 miles of seashore) in England and Wales, and each succeeding monarch holds the title Duke of Lancaster, including female monarchs, who are known as "The Queen, the Duke of Lancaster." Some of the revenues from the Privy Purse (provided by the Duchy) are used to cover expenses not borne by the Sovereign Grant, usually from other members of the Royal family.

     Then there is the Royal Collection, which is the collection of priceless artifacts owned by the British monarch as sovereign, but held in trust for his or her successors and the nation. In other words, the Collection is not owned by the monarch in a personal capacity, and its contents cannot be sold. Very few items of the Collection survive prior to the 1500's, and its modern foundations were laid by Charles I - who was a patron of Anthony van Dyck and purchased an enormous quantity of works from other artists. The Collection was sold off by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650's, but was largely restored when the monarchy itself was restored. Since then, succeeding generations of monarchs and/or their consorts have either purchased items for the Collection or have received gifts from individuals and countries that have made their way to the Collection.

The Imperial State Crown is one of most precious items of the Royal Collection

     Today, it is one of the largest and extensive collections on the world, with over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolors and drawings, about 150,000 old master prints, photographs, tapestries, furniture, ceramics, books, gold and silver plate, and other works of art. Also included are the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, arms and armor, jewellery, and other assorted items. The Collection is dispersed across the state-owned royal palaces (both occupied and unoccupied), including Windsor, Buckingham Palace, Holyroodhouse, and Hampton Court Palace. Parts of the Collection are also on loan to various museums and touring exhibitions, including the British Museum and the National Gallery. The Collection's value is indeterminable in part because many items (including the Crown Jewels) are priceless.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, the Queen's official residence in Scotland.

     Finally, there are occupied and state-owned Royal residences, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Hillsborough Castle, Clarence House, St. James's Palace, and Kensington Palace. They are held in trust for the official use of succeeding monarchs and their families, and like the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Royal Collection, are not personally owned by the Queen and cannot be sold by her.

     As for the claim that Elizabeth II owns one-sixth of the world's land surface (6.6 billion acres), well that figure appears to be the sum of the geographic land area of all of the Commonwealth realms and territories, including the UK, Canada, the Bahamas, the Falklands, Gibraltar, parts of Antarctica, and many others. Again, these are lands that are not owned by the Queen in a personal capacity, and not all land in those countries is Crown land (in Canada's case, its 89%) and such land is held by the various governments in the name of the monarch. (It should be noted that this spurious claim is made alongside Pope Francis owning a large chunk of the world, but only because the Catholic Church owns these lands).

     So on the surface, the Queen appears to be up to her eyeballs with a fortune that is one of the largest in the world. But the reality is that her personal wealth is modest compared to the assets held by her in trust for her successors and the countries over which she reigns. The most important thing to remember is that those assets cannot be owned outright by the Queen and she cannot sell them for personal profit, which is a basic tenet for something to be counted as personal wealth.

And this is why the Queen does not appear on any rich list.



Photo Credit: Elwyn Thomas Roddick via Geograph cc, West Midlands Police via Flickr cc, Paul Robertson via Flickr cc, Oliver-Bonjoch via Wikimedia Commons cc