Formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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The formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has involved personal and political union across Great Britain and the wider British Isles. The United Kingdom is the most recent of a number of sovereign states that have been established in Great Britain at different periods in history, in different combinations and under a variety of polities. Historian Norman Davies has counted sixteen different states over the past 2,000 years.^[1]

By the start of the 16th century, the number of states in Great Britain had been reduced to two: the

in 1707 (to ratify the Treaty).

The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Independence for the Irish Free State in 1922 followed the partition of the island of Ireland two years previously, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

In the 20th century, the rise of Welsh and Scottish nationalism and resolution of the Troubles in Ireland resulted in the establishment of devolved parliaments or assemblies for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Background

Constitutional documents and events relevant to the status of the United Kingdom and its countries
List per year Referendums (Scotland & Wales) Act 1997 Scottish devolution referendum 1997 Welsh devolution referendum 1997 Good Friday Agreement 1998 Northern Ireland Act 1998 Government of Wales Act 1998 Human Rights Act 1998 Scotland Act 1998 House of Lords Act 1999 Representation of the People Act 2000 2000 Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 Constitutional Reform Act 2005 Government of Wales Act 2006 2006 Northern Ireland Act 2009 2009 Lisbon Treaty 2009 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 Parl. Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 Welsh devolution referendum 2011 Alternative Vote referendum 2011 European Union Act 2011 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 Scotland Act 2012 2012 Succession to the Crown Act 2013 2013 Scottish independence referendum 2014 House of Lords Reform Act 2014 Wales Act 2014 2014 HL (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015 Recall of MPs Act 2015 European Union Referendum Act 2015 EU membership referendum 2016 Scotland Act 2016 2016 Wales Act 2017 2017 EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 Invocation of Article 50 2017 European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 EU Withdrawal Act 2019 2019 EU Withdrawal (No. 2) Act 2019 Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 UK leaves the European Union 2020 EU (Future Relationship) Act 2020 Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022
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England's conquest of Wales

Through internal struggles and dynastic marriage alliances, the Welsh became more united until

in 1277 reasserted Llywelyn's fealty to the King of England.

In 1282, following another rebellion,

.

Initially, the Crown had only indirect control over much of Wales because the

in the north and west of the country, which was held personally by the King (or the heir to the Crown) but was not incorporated into the Kingdom of England. However, between the 13th and 16th centuries the Crown gradually acquired most of the Marcher Lordships, usually through inheritance, until almost all of Wales came under Crown control. Nevertheless, the whole of Wales – that is, the Principality, Marcher Lordships held by the Crown and Marcher Lordships held by others – remained outside of the legal and constitutional structures of the Kingdom of England.

There was no major uprising except that led by Owain Glyndŵr a century later, against Henry IV of England. In 1404 Glyndŵr was crowned Prince of Wales in the presence of emissaries from France, Spain, and Scotland; he went on to hold parliamentary assemblies at several Welsh towns, including Machynlleth. The rebellion was ultimately to founder, however. Glyndŵr went into hiding in 1412, and peace was more or less restored in Wales by 1415.

The power of the Marcher lords was ended in 1535, when the political and administrative union of England and Wales was completed. The

, which led to ambiguity about its status as part of England or Wales.) The Act also extended the Law of England to both England and Wales and made English the only permissible language for official purposes. This had the effect of creating an English-speaking ruling class amongst the Welsh, at a time when Welsh was the language of the great majority. Wales was also now represented in Parliament at Westminster.

English Conquest of Ireland

By the 12th century,

, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland.

With the authority of the papal bull Henry landed with a large fleet in 1171 and claimed sovereignty over the island. A peace treaty followed in 1175, with the Irish High King keeping lands outside Leinster, which had passed to Henry on the expected death of both Diarmait and de Clare. When the High King lost his authority Henry awarded his Irish territories to his younger son

in Ireland.

There was a resurgence of Gaelic power as rebellious attacks stretched Norman resources. Politics and events in Gaelic Ireland also served to draw the settlers deeper into the orbit of the Irish. When the Black Death arrived in Ireland in 1348 it hit the English and Norman inhabitants who lived in towns and villages far harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in more dispersed rural settlements. After it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the countryside again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin.

Outside the Pale, the Hiberno-Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs. Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the

. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the "Gaelicisation" of Ireland that they passed special legislation banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes, or inter-marrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect. By the end of the 15th century, the ruling English authority in Ireland had almost all disappeared.

In 1532,

, the Irish remained Catholic. This affected Ireland's relationship with England for the next four hundred years since the English tried to re-conquer and colonise Ireland to prevent Ireland being a base for Catholic forces that were trying to overthrow the Protestant settlement in England.

From 1536, Henry VIII decided to conquer Ireland and bring it under crown control so the island would not become a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. In 1541, he upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full kingdom. Henry was proclaimed

James I

, after several bloody conflicts. However, the English were not successful in converting the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion, and the brutal methods used by Crown authority to pacify the country heightened resentment of English rule.

From the mid-16th and into the early 17th century, Crown governments carried out a policy of

.

Personal Union: Union of the Crowns

In August 1503

maintained a secret correspondence with James in order to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. Elizabeth died on 24 March 1603, and James was proclaimed king in London later the same day. Despite sharing a monarchy, Scotland and England continued as separate countries with separate parliaments for over one hundred more years.

James had the idealistic ambition of building on the personal union of the crowns of Scotland and England so as to establish a permanent Union of the Crowns under one monarch, one parliament, and one law. He insisted that English and Scots should "join and coalesce together in a sincere and perfect union, as two twins bred in one belly, to love one another as no more two but one estate". James's ambitions were greeted with very little enthusiasm, as one by one members of parliament rushed to defend the ancient name and realm of England. All sorts of legal objections were raised: all laws would have to be renewed and all treaties renegotiated. For James, whose experience of parliaments was limited to the stage-managed and semi-feudal Scottish variety, the self-assurance – and obduracy – of the English version, which had long experience of upsetting monarchs, was an obvious shock. The Scots were no more enthusiastic than the English because they feared being reduced to the status of Wales or Ireland. In October 1604, James assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, although Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the title in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance". The two realms continued to maintain separate parliaments. The Union of the Crowns had begun a process that would lead to the eventual unification of the two kingdoms. However, in the ensuing hundred years, strong religious and political differences continued to divide the kingdoms, and common royalty could not prevent occasions of internecine warfare.

James did not create a

neighbors. It was the one corner of the British Isles where Britishness became truly meaningful as a political and cultural identity in its own right, as opposed to a gloss on older and deeper national associations.

Ruling over the diverse kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland proved difficult for James and his successor

, James reintroduced bishops into the Church of Scotland against the wishes of the presbyterian party.

In 1625, James was succeeded by his son

Bishop's Wars

.

, had antagonised the native Irish Catholics by repeated initiatives to confiscate their lands and grant them to English colonists. He had also angered them by enforcing new taxes but denying Roman Catholics full rights as subjects. What made this situation explosive was his idea, in 1639, to offer Irish Catholics the reforms they had been looking for in return for them raising and paying for an Irish army to put down the Scottish rebellion. Although the army was to be officered by Protestants, the idea of an Irish Catholic army being used to enforce what was seen by many as tyrannical government horrified both the Scottish and the English Parliament, who in response threatened to invade Ireland.

Alienated by British Protestant domination and frightened by the rhetoric of the English and Scottish Parliaments, a small group of Irish conspirators launched the Irish Rebellion of 1641, ostensibly in support of the "King's Rights". The rising was marked by widespread assaults on the British Protestant communities in Ireland, sometimes culminating in massacres. Rumours spread in England and Scotland that the killings had the King's sanction and that this was a foretaste of what was in store for them if the King's Irish troops landed in Britain. As a result, the English Parliament refused to pay for a royal army to put down the rebellion in Ireland and instead raised its own armed forces. The King did likewise, rallying those Royalists (some of them members of Parliament) who believed that loyalty to the legitimate King was the most important political principle.

The

. In Scotland, the Royalists had a series of victories in 1644–45 but were crushed with the end of the first English Civil War and the return of the main Covenanter armies to Scotland.

After the end of the second English Civil War, the victorious Parliamentary forces, now commanded by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland and crushed the Royalist-Confederate alliance there in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649. Their alliance with the Scottish Covenanters had also broken down, and the Scots crowned Charles II as king. Cromwell therefore embarked on a conquest of Scotland in 1650–51. By the end of the wars, the Three Kingdoms were a unitary state called the English Commonwealth, ostensibly a republic but having many characteristics of a military dictatorship.

While the Wars of the Three Kingdoms pre-figured many of the changes that would shape modern Britain, in the short term it resolved little. The

, no future British monarch could be under any illusion that perceived despotism would be tolerated, and the second was that the excesses of Army rule, particularly that of the Major-Generals, has left an abiding mistrust of military rule in the English speaking world.

Ireland and Scotland were occupied by the New Model Army during the Interregnum. In Ireland, almost all lands belonging to Irish Catholics were confiscated as punishment for the rebellion of 1641; harsh

was restored as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Under the

English Restoration

, the political system returned to the constitutional position of before the wars: Scotland and Ireland were returned their Parliaments.

When

in 1690.

Formation of the Union

Acts of Union 1707

Deeper political integration was a key policy of

did accept the proposals.

In 1707, the Acts of Union received their

. For England's part, a possible ally for European states hostile to England had been neutralised while simultaneously securing a Protestant succession to the new British throne.

However, certain aspects of the former independent kingdoms remained separate. Examples of Scottish and English institutions that were not merged into the British system include

and the systems of education and higher learning. These remain separate.

Acts of Union 1800

After the

was put down by British forces.

The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was completed by the Acts of Union 1800 passed by each parliament, uniting the two kingdoms into one, called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland".^[7] The twin Acts were passed in the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland with substantial majorities achieved in Ireland in part (according to contemporary documents) through bribery, namely the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their votes.^[8]

Under the terms of the union, there was to be but one Parliament of the United Kingdom.^[9] Ireland sent four lords spiritual (bishops) and twenty-eight lords temporal to the House of Lords and one hundred members to the House of Commons at Westminster. The lords spiritual were chosen by rotation, and the lords temporal were elected from among the peers of Ireland.

Part of the arrangement as a trade-off for Irish Catholics was to be the granting of

. The Roman Catholic hierarchy had endorsed the Union. However, the decision to block Catholic Emancipation fatally undermined its appeal.

Table of historic merging of territories within the UK

Date	Statute/Act etc.	Territories included	Name	Notes	Not included
Pre-1284	-	-	-	-	Separate countries in/of England / Ireland / Scotland / Wales
1284	Statute of Rhuddlan	England & Wales	England	Principality of Wales annexed to the Crown of England	Kingdom of Scotland / Lordship of Ireland since 1171
1536	Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542	England & Wales	Kingdom of England	Wales fully incorporated into the Kingdom of England	Kingdom of Scotland / Lordship of Ireland, shortly to become Kingdom of Ireland in Crown of Ireland Act 1542
1603	Union of the Crowns	England, Scotland & Wales (under a common king)	Great Britain	James VI and I titled "King of Great Brittaine, France, and Ireland" although he did not actually rule France; Ireland effectively a subject nation	Kingdom of Ireland (Since 1541/42)
1707	Acts of Union 1707	England, Scotland & Wales (merging of parliaments)	Kingdom of Great Britain	See Monarchy of Scotland -personal union between the Crown of Scotland and the British Crown becomes a political union	Kingdom of Ireland
1801	Acts of Union 1800	England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales	United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland	Parliament of Ireland approved political union of monarchies of Ireland and Great Britain	-
1921	Anglo-Irish Treaty	England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales	United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland	establishment of the Irish Free State	Irish Free State, later Republic of Ireland or Éire (see Names of the Irish state)

See also Documents relevant to personal and legislative unions of the

.

The "disuniting" of the United Kingdom

Irish alienation and independence

The 19th century saw the

, at a time when Ireland was the only home nation where conscription was not in force.

The 19th century and early 20th century saw the rise of

Boundary Commission

was set up to decide on the border between the two Irish states, though it was subsequently abandoned after it recommended only minor adjustments to the border.

The Irish Free State was initially a

declared itself a republic in 1949

and thereby ceased to be regarded as in the British Commonwealth having no constitutional ties to the United Kingdom.

The "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" continued in name until 1927 when it was renamed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" by the

Despite increasing political independence from each other from 1922, and complete political independence since 1949, the union left the two countries intertwined with each other in many respects. Ireland used the

Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. Since 1922, it has sometimes enjoyed self-government, and at other times has been ruled directly from Westminster. However, even while governing itself, it has always kept its representation in the United Kingdom Parliament, and has formed part of the country which, since 1927, has included "Northern Ireland" in its name.

Devolution

Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Assembly in its current guise was first elected on 25 June 1998 and first met on 1 July 1998. However, it only existed in "shadow" form until 2 December 1999 when full powers were devolved to the Assembly. The Assembly's composition and powers are laid down in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The Assembly has both legislative powers and responsibility for electing the Northern Ireland Executive.

The Assembly has authority to legislate in a field of competences known as "transferred matters". These matters include any competence not explicitly retained by the Parliament at Westminster. Powers reserved by Westminster are divided into "excepted matters", which it retains indefinitely, and "reserved matters", which may be transferred to the competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly at a future date.

Scotland

A Scottish Parliament was convened by the Scotland Act 1998, following a referendum in 1997, in which the Scottish electorate voted for devolution. The first meeting of the new Parliament took place on 12 May 1999. It has the power to legislate in all areas that are not explicitly reserved to Westminster. The British Parliament retains the ability to amend the terms of reference of the Scottish Parliament, and can extend or reduce the areas in which it can make laws.

Wales

The

.

In November 2019, the Assembly voted to change its name to Senedd Cymru or the Welsh Parliament, referred simply as the Senedd in both Welsh and English,^[13] a name change that took effect from 6 May 2020.^[14]

Future

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Prospect of Scottish independence

In 2014, 55% of Scottish voters rejected leaving the UK in an independence referendum. However, after the 2016 European Union membership referendum, in which Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland, voted to remain in the EU while England and Wales voted to leave, there is the prospect of a second Scottish independence referendum. With some polls on support for Scottish independence being in the majority in 2020, however, polls have a margin of error and many do not include 16-17-year-olds like in the 2014 referendum.

Prospect of Welsh independence

Wales voted to leave in the EU referendum. However, historically the support for Welsh independence has predominantly been low, ranging between 10% in 2013 and 24% in 2019. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, however, popular support has risen. One poll in March 2021 showed that, with "don't knows" removed, nearly 40% of Welsh people were in favour of independence.^[15]

Prospect of Irish reunification

In 1973, Northern Ireland had a referendum on Irish reunification, though the result was in favour of the United Kingdom and the poll was boycotted by Nationalists. The 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum was then held to approve the Good Friday Agreement, which among other things, included a clause which states that a border poll on Irish reunification must be held if public opinion is shown to have changed in favour of a United Ireland.

See also

• Constitution of the United Kingdom
• History of the Constitution of the United Kingdom

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Davies, Norman. The Isles: A History. (London: Macmillan, 1999.
  ISBN 0-333-69283-7
  ).