page_title: Constitution of the United Kingdom
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Constitution of the United Kingdom / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an edited version of the file: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:British_Empire_evolution.gif on wikimedia, which used to be on this page. The old version seemed to suggest that the Republic of Ireland rejoined the British Empire after 1938 sometime which is obviously untrue. I just re-edited the .gif to reflect the fact that this is not true. This file was made from the public domain image Image:Colonisation2.gif by User:Andrei nacu, by removing other countries and including only Britain. Years shown: 1492, 1550, 1660, 1754, 1822, 1885, 1914, 1919, 1938, 1945, 1959, 1974, 2007
context_page_description: The Constitution of the United Kingdom is the system of rules that decides the political governance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Unlike most countries, the UK constitution is not codified into a single document. However, the UK Supreme Court recognises that there are constitutional principles, including parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, and upholding international law.
  The UK Supreme Court also recognises that some Acts of Parliament have special constitutional status. These include Magna Carta, which in 1215 required the King to call a "common counsel" to represent people, to hold courts in a fixed place, to guarantee fair trials, to guarantee free movement of people, to free the church from the state, and to guarantee rights of "common" people to use the land. After the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Claim of Right Act 1689 cemented Parliament's supremacy over the monarch, the church and the courts, and said that the "election of members of Parliament ought to be free".
context_section_description: The history of the UK constitution, though officially beginning in 1800, traces back to a time long before the four nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were fully formed. Before the Norman Invasion of 1066, the written history of law was scant. William the Conqueror, advised by a King's Council (Curia Regis), established a common law in England under one monarch, and the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 cataloguing all land and labour to levy taxes. Just 12 per cent of people were free, while the feudal system made others serfs, slaves or bordars and cottars. In 1190 Richard the Lionheart, more closely tied with the Pope in Rome, joined the Third Crusade to invade the Holy land, but at great cost. Taxes levied by Richard I, and his successor King John to pay for the wars led to intense discontent, and the aristocracy forcing the King to sign the Magna Carta 1215. This was a commitment to hold 'common counsel' before any taxation, hold courts at a fixed place, hold trials according to law or before an accused's peers, guarantee free movement of people for trade, and give back common land. Failure to abide by Magna Carta led to the First Barons' war, and the popular legend of Robin Hood emerged: a returned crusader who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. The commitments on common land were soon recast in the Charter of the Forest 1217, signed at St Paul's by Henry III. These documents established that the monarch, even with apparent authority from God, was bound by law, and it remains 'the nearest approach to an irrepealable "fundamental statute" that England has ever had.' Throughout the Middle Ages, common land was a source of welfare for common people, peasant labourers bound by a feudal system of control. In 1348, the Black Death struck England, and killed around a third of the population. As peasants lost their lords, and there was a shortage of workers, wages rose. The King and Parliament responded with the Statute of Labourers 1351 to freeze wage rises. This led to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, where leaders demanded an end to feudalism, and for everything to be held in common. Despite the revolt's violent repression, slavery and serfdom broke down, yet most people remained without any substantial liberty, in political or economic rights. As sheep farming became more profitable than agricultural work, enclosures of common land dispossessed more people, who turned into paupers and were punished. Under Henry VIII, to seal a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn (who he soon beheaded for supposed infidelity), the Church of England was declared separate from Rome in the Act of Supremacy 1534, with the King as the head. The Law in Wales Act 1535 united Wales and England in one administrative system, while the King became ever more despotic, executing the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More in 1535, and dissolving the monasteries and murdering those who resisted. After Henry VIII died, and power struggles following the death of his boy Edward VI at age 15, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, took the throne in 1558. Half a century of prosperity followed as Elizabeth I avoided wars, but founded corporations including the East India Company to monopolise trade routes. Under her successor, James I, further companies were created to colonise North America, including the London Company and the Virginia Company in 1606, and the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628. Many religious dissidents left England to settle the new world.
  While Elizabeth I maintained a Protestant church, under her successor James, who unified the Scottish and English Crowns, religious and political tensions grew as he asserted a divine right of Kings. This prompted a series of cases from Sir Edward Coke, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and then King's Bench courts, which denied that the King could pass judgment in legal proceedings, and held that the royal prerogative was subject to the law and cannot be expanded. Coke CJ went even further in Dr Bonham's case, holding that even that "the common law
caption: The British Empire ended after WW2 as countries, where democracy and freedom were suppressed, demanded independence. The Commonwealth is now open to any country committed to peace, liberty, equality, and development, as in the Harare Declaration of 1991.