The Royal Style.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 44, 22 February 1927, Page 8

The Royal Style.

Changes in the Titles of the Kings. Successive changes in the Royal title, one jof ■which has been suggested by the Imperial Conference, are interesting as concentrating a large amount of our national history. When James VI., King of Scots, succeeded to the Englisii-Thione jin 1.6Q3,. the title which passed to him from his predecessor was King of England, France and Ireland. If the title of King of France recalled an unsuccessful past, the title of King of Ireland looked forward to a somewhat dubious future, says the Glasgow "Herald." It had been assumed by Henry VIII., who preferred it to the description Lord of Ireland, with which his predecessors had been content. James, with a statesmanlike anxiety for the union of Lngland and Scotland, which was not combined with any tactical

skill in his efforts to bring about the realisation of his project, conferred upon himself the new title of Great Britain. That style was very unpopular with his English subjects, who affected to fear a confusion with the French province of Brittany, but he and his descendants continued to use it, and familiarity with the name may have helped to smooth the long and difficult road to actual union. There was in the seventeenth centutry, no Kingdom of Great Britain, for England and Scotland were separate Kingdoms, with no constitutional bond of union except a recognition, of the same sovereign as the monarch of each of them. For a few years, under Cromwell, there was an actual union; but the Commonwealth was described as the Commonwealth, not of Great Britain, but of England, Scotland and Ireland. The name Great Britain, thus employed when it did not correspond to the facts and disregarded when it did, became the accurate, as well as the official, description after the union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1707. A few years later an addition to the Eoyal titles registered the fact of tTie succession r.t n neve reigning House for the King of Great Britain, France and Ireland was also Elector of Hanover. No further

change took place until the union with Ireland in 1801 necessitated an alteration in the Royal style. George 111. became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and with characteristic good sense he seized the opportunity of divesting himself of the historical absurdity of the description King of France, 5n spite of the fact that we were then at war wi'h that ?oi;ntry. The two alterations made in the Rcyai t>ty'e wiUiJL living memory register the fact of the importance of the monarchy in relation to the Empire. When Parliament, under the leadership of Disraeli, conferred upon Queen Victoria the title of Empress of India, it took a step which could not be other than the beginning of a process, for India could not remain alone in the title of the Sovereign. The addition of the words, "of the British Dominions beyond the Seas," was made on the accession of King Edward VII., and the place of the Dominions in the British Commonwealth of Nations was thereby recognised. It is well that that law should coincide with fact, and the proposed new title "King of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dom'niojis beyond tl.s Soas." will, doubtless, soon receive the necessary sanction of the Legislature.