The
Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the
United Kingdom of Great Britain,
[1] was a
state in
Western Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1800. It was created by the merger of the
Kingdom of Scotland and the
Kingdom of England, under the
Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of
Great Britain. A new single parliament and government, based in
Westminster in
London, controlled the new kingdom. The two separate kingdoms of Scotland and England had
shared the same monarch since
James VI, King of Scots, became
King of England in 1603 following the death of
Queen Elizabeth I.
The Kingdom of Great Britain was superseded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 when the Kingdom of Ireland was absorbed with the enactment of the Act of Union 1800 following the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
The island of Great Britain was ruled by a single monarch with two titles (King of England and King of Scotland) following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, except during the Interregnum and during the joint reign of William and Mary. From 1707, however, the monarch of the Kingdom of Great Britain ruled by the power of a single unified Crown of Great Britain, rather than by the power of both crowns of the previously separate Kingdoms.[2] The succession to the throne was determined by the English Act of Settlement, rather than the Scottish equivalent, the Act of Security. The adoption of the Act of Settlement required that the heir to the English throne be a Protestant descendant of Sophia of Hanover, effecting the future Hanoverian succession. The Act of Union 1707 extended this to the new unified Kingdom of Great Britain.[3]
Legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland.[4] As with the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Parliament of Great Britain included three elements the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Crown-in-Parliament. England and Scotland were given seats in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons of the new parliament. Although Scotland's representation in both houses was smaller than its population indicated it should have been, representation in parliament was at that time based not on population but on taxation, and Scotland was given a greater number of seats than its share of taxation warranted. Under the terms of the union, Scotland sent 16 representative peers to the Lords and elected 45 members to the Commons, with the rest being sent from England and Wales.[5] This cooperation still forms the basis of British politics today.
