ABSTRACT
The concept of constitutional Monarchy, as it is understood in the United Kingdom today, was first authoritatively explained in an English context by the great historian Thomas Babington Macaulay in his History of England published in 1855. Since this coincided with the second phase of Queen Victoria’s reign, when she was effectively joint Sovereign with her husband Prince Albert, it is clear that a recognisably modern constitutional Monarchy was already in existence by the time the term entered into literary usage. In modern times Professor Vernon Bogdanor has supplied a pithy definition of constitutional Monarchy, namely ‘a state which is headed by a Sovereign who reigns but does not rule’; but he has also offered a more subtle formulation which captures the very British political context within which our constitutional Monarchy operates, namely ‘a set of conventions which limit the discretion of the Sovereign, so that his or her public acts are in reality those of Ministers’.1
