Fifteen Things You Should Know About Britain Quiz

Answer: Alfred the Great

Alfred was the first monarch in our history to be given the title "The Great". Historians dispute some of the stories of his life but most are believed to be true. His father took him to Rome when he was a small boy and he was given an audience with Pope Leo IV who pronounced him King of England. He became a fine scholar, a just and wise king, a legal innovator and an excellent administrator. He founded the first English navy and was a fierce warrior.

After being defeated by the Vikings at Chippenham in 878 he hid in the Somerset Levels and (so the legend goes) was given shelter by a peasant woman who didn't know his true identity. One day, she told him to watch over her baking but his mind was so taken up with plotting a counter-attack on the Vikings that he allowed the cakes to burn for which he, the King, was severely scolded by the peasant woman.

When he emerged from isolation he made Wessex his stronghold and from there, defeated the Vikings at Edington, Wiltshire. After this he united the tribes and created the Kingdom of England.

Alfred died in October 899 and was buried in Winchester Abbey. However, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries it is believed by some historians that his remains were discovered by convicts who had been put to work at building a prison on the site of the former Abbey. Not realising whose remains they had found, the bones were scattered. If this is true, it would be sad that the mortal remains of one of England's greatest ever monarchs have no known resting place.

Answer: The Norman Invasion

In September 1066, England was invaded in the north by the Norwegian King Hardrada. The English king, Harold marched his army 250 miles to defeat Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the present day East Riding of Yorkshire. Hardrada was killed in the battle. Meanwhile William of Normandy had landed his army at Pevensey on the south coast so Harold had to immediately return south to engage them. The two armies clashed on 14 October and William defeated Harold at Senlac Hill near Hastings (Senlac is derived from the French "Sanguelac" which loosely translates as "Lake of Blood"). According to the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold was killed by an arrow through his eye, but this detail may have been added to the tapestry much later.

William was crowned king on Christmas Day 1066. He started building the Tower of London, commissioned the Domesday Book, founded the Norman dynasty and became known as the Conqueror. He died on 9 September 1087 and is buried in Caen, France. Defeat at Hastings ended the Anglo-Saxon dynasty and began more than four hundred years of Norman and Plantagenet rule. Even though invaders had been coming here for centuries, 1066 is firmly established as the definitive point in history when England became a country made up of migrants, from the Normans to the multicultural population we enjoy today.

Answer: Magna Carta

Magna Carta translates as Great Charter. King John attached the Royal Seal to the document (he never did sign it because he couldn't write) at Runnymede near Windsor on 15 June 1215. This iconic document was concerned at the time more with the rights of the barons than the interests of the people but in time it was used to good effect to implement radical change for the common good. Sir Edward Coke used it extensively to argue against the Divine Right of Kings propounded by the Stuart monarchs, especially Charles I. It set out the principles which led to trial by jury: "No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land." The right to due process is a fundamental principle of freedom and liberty in every democracy in the world to this day.

The rebel colonists in America used Magna Carta (a copy of the 1297 version of the Charter is held by the US government) extensively to draft the US Constitution in 1789, which became Supreme Law in the United States.

Only four exemplifications (copies) of the original 1215 document remain, held in the British Library and the Cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury.

Answer: The Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were fought between two factions of the Plantagenet Dynasty, the Lancastrians (Red Rose) and the Yorkists (White Rose). These wars plunged England into decades of instability until Richard III was defeated and killed by the forces of Henry Tudor (who became Henry VII and founded the Tudor dynasty) at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

A number of reasons exist for the title given to these conflicts. For example, in Shakespeare's play "Henry VI Part One", Richard Plantagenet and the Duke of Somerset ask their nobles to pledge allegiance to either the Yorkist claim to the throne or the Lancastrian, by choosing from a nearby rose bush either a white rose for York or a red rose for Lancashire.

Answer: High Treason

The execution of Charles I for high treason after the biggest civil war (of many) in our history led to what was in effect a military dictatorship in England. Charles had in effect demanded that Parliament recognise the Divine Right of Kings which he believed gave him absolute power. Parliament disagreed and the bloody Civil War followed. Charles' execution was followed by the rule of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector and is the only time in history that Britain has been a Republic. Cromwell's rule degenerated into a despotic dictatorship until his death in 1658. This led, in 1660, to the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II - known as "the Merry Monarch" because of all his mistresses - which was not without its troubles. During violent anti-Catholic riots one of the King's mistresses, Nell Gwynn, saved her life by shouting out to the mob "Don't hang me, I'm his Protestant whore."

In 1661, Oliver Cromwell was subjected to a posthumous execution whereby his remains were exhumed by vengeful Royalists, hanged in chains from a gallows at Tyburn and subsequently thrown in a pit, except for the severed head which was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Abbey.

Answer: The Act of Union

The Act of Union between England and Scotland created the United Kingdom. The Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence and the whole country came to be ruled from Westminster. Whilst it might seem odd to think that a country would surrender its own sovereignty in this way, it is important to bear in mind that this union led to peace between two countries that had been in conflict for centuries and brought about a period of great original thought and enlightenment. Moreover, at the time of Union Scotland was very heavily in debt.
Scotland and England had shared the same monarch since 1603, when King james VI inherited the English throne.

The Scots voted to retain the United Kingdom in a referendum on the union in 2014 although another referendum in 2016 to leave the European Union led to renewed calls for Scottish independence.

Answer: Rule Britannia

'Heart of Oak' and 'A Life on The Ocean Wave' are marches of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines respectively. 'God Save The King/Queen' is the British National Anthem.

'Rule Britannia' was composed by Thomas Arne, to a poem by James Thomson. This illustrates the reliance Britain placed on a strong navy. As an island Britain did not needed a large standing army, a factor which also protected the ruling government from military coups. The navy played a major role in protecting Britain from invasion and also the expansion of the empire.

Answer: The Great Reform Act

Also known as the Representation of the People Act (1832), it was intended to end the 'Rotten Boroughs' where powerful landowners could nominate an MP regardless of whether they had any voters in their constituency. The 'Rotten Boroughs' also included towns that had hardly any voters.

A notorious example of this was the constituency of Dunwich in Suffolk (parodied in the TV series Blackadder III as 'Dunny-on-the-Wold'), where the sea encroached onto the land and left all but a few houses of the borough under the water. Dunwich usually had only around 30 constituents but returned two MP's to Parliament. Another example was the constituency of Old Sarum which had 13 Burbage Plots which could be used to "manufacture" electors, usually around half a dozen, to elect an MP to Parliament.

Answer: The Battle of Waterloo

Waterloo marked the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the forces of Britain and Prussia led by the Duke of Wellington and Gerhard von Blucher respectively. Defeat for Napoleon was the decisive action of the Waterloo Campaign, put an end to the attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte to restore himself as Emperor of The French, eliminated any threat of invasion of England and brought about decades of peace between the two countries. Napoleon abdicated four days after defeat at Waterloo and British and Prussian coalition forces marched into Paris three days after that.

Wellington was known as the Iron Duke because of his hard, uncompromising manner and one darkly amusing though probably apocryphal story surrounds him and the Earl of Uxbridge when, during the battle, the Earl was wounded by a shell exploding nearby. He said to the Duke "By Gad, Sir. I believe I've had my leg blown off" to which Wellington calmly replied "By Gad, Sir. I believe you have." Whether or not such a stiff-upper-lip exchange really occurred, the Earl did indeed lose his leg during the battle. The amputated limb was interred in the village of Waterloo and because of the (alleged) story became a tourist attraction.

Answer: Irish Potato Famine

The Irish Potato Famine is estimated to have led to the deaths of more than 1 million Irish people and the migration of another million mostly to America. It caused the population of Ireland to drop by between 20-25%. An Irish proverb says that God created the blight, but the British created the famine. The reasons for this would take too long to record here but in short, British laws and absentee landlords had forced Ireland to become largely a monoculture where the Irish Lumper potato was almost the only crop grown. When potato blight affected large parts of Europe, Ireland was disproportionately affected because this variety of potato was more susceptible to the blight than others.

Even during the worst parts of the famine however, British absentee landlords forced whatever food that could be grown in Ireland to be exported to England, and the government did not close the Irish ports. More than 4,000 ships took food out of Ireland while Irish men, women and children starved to death. The importance of this event in underpinning 150 years of troubles in Ireland cannot be understated. It caused political and sectarian tensions to rise, boosted Irish Republicanism and became a rallying cry for the growing rebel movement.

Answer: The Parliament Act

Two such Acts were passed, the first in 1911 and the second in 1949. The second was passed to extend the original Act and the two are now simply known as The Parliament Act. The purpose of the Act was to establish the supremacy of the House of Commons. In 1909 the peers refused to ratify Lloyd George's budget and in retaliation the Liberal government curtailed their powers. As Gilbert and Sullivan put it in their operetta "Iolanthe": "The peers did nothing very much, but did it very well." Iolanthe lampoons the House of Lords as the domain of dim witted, privileged individuals whose only qualification for government is accident of birth.

Probably the most famous example in the early part of the 21st Century of the Parliament Act being used to prevent the Lords blocking an Act of Parliament was in 2005 when The Countryside Alliance attempted to challenge the validity of The Hunting Act which banned the hunting of wild animals with dogs. The House of Commons passed this legislation with the intention of putting an end to (among other things) fox hunting, which enraged sections of the aristocracy.

Answer: World War I

Fought principally against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, this war cost nearly a million British lives but it also marked a sea change in how the British people responded to authority. No longer would Britons slavishly follow their leaders unthinkingly 'over the top' in future conflicts. The aftermath of World War I also caused Parliament to re-think social policy.

Fearing a post war Socialist Revolution similar to the one that deposed the Romanov Dynasty in Russia in 1917, the shift in social attitudes in Britain caused Parliament to realise that the class system in Britain needed to be re-thought. During a post war Parliamentary debate about reforming the electoral system, MP George Cave said "War by all classes of our countrymen has brought us nearer together, has opened men's eyes, and removed misunderstandings on all sides. It has made it, I think, impossible that ever again, at all events in the lifetime of the present generation, there should be a revival of the old class feeling which was responsible for so much, and, among other things, for the exclusion for a period, of so many of our population from the class of electors."

Answer: 1918

Sometimes referred to as The Fourth Reform Act, The Representation of the People Act (1918) was the first Act of Parliament to enfranchise women.
For many years before the war, the Women's Political and Social Union (WPSU), often referred to as the Suffragette Movement, had campaigned for votes for women with no success due to the entrenched male attitudes of the day, one of which was that women did not possess the intellectual capacity to understand politics sufficiently to be entrusted with the vote. Another belief was that women were so physically feeble they could not do the same work that men did, and therefore could not be considered equals.

However, during World War One, as more and more of the nation's menfolk marched off to the war women were called upon to work in munitions factories all over the country, working the long shifts and performing the hard manual labour that they had been told for so many years they couldn't do. Had it not been for women doing this essential war work, the troops at the front would very soon have had no bullets or shells for their weapons.

After the war, the contribution of women to the war effort was recognised and the shift in social attitudes acknowledged that women were both physically and intellectually far more capable than hitherto given credit for. Under the terms of the 1918 Act, Women over 30 would qualify for the vote if they were a member of, or married to, a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner or a graduate voting in a University Constituency. This brought more than 8 million women nationwide onto the electoral register.

The age 30 restriction was set to prevent female voters outnumbering male voters due to the loss of male life on the First World War battlefields. In the years that followed and as the female/male demographic stabilised the rules were changed until full equality was eventually achieved. The 1918 Act also allowed women to be elected to Parliament. Several women stood for election in 1918 though only one was elected: Constance Markievicz was elected as MP for Dublin St Patricks. She chose not to take her seat at Westminster, choosing instead to join the first Irish Dail. The first female MP to sit at Westminster was Nancy Astor who was elected as MP for Plymouth Sutton in 1919.

Answer: 3 September 1939

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, under the false pretext that Polish forces had engaged in acts of sabotage against German targets close to the border between the two countries. Britain was allied to Poland and an ultimatum was issued to Germany to send 'a satisfactory response' by 11.00 am on 3 September.

At 11.15am that day, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation: "This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany".

Europe was quickly overrun by Hitler's armies and Britain stood alone with only the English Channel between us and invasion. It was at this time that the newly installed Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his historic "We will fight them on the beaches... we will never surrender" speech, which echoed around the world." Without Britain's resistance, Europe would (according to Churchill) have entered a 'new dark age'.

World War II changed the dynamic between leaders and troops. When Field Marshall Montgomery, who had fought in WWI at Ypres (where he was shot through a lung by a sniper) and at Arras and Passchendale, and knew the horrors of modern warfare, asked a British soldier what was his most treasured possession the soldier replied "My rifle, Sir." Monty said "No it isn't, your most treasured possession is your life and I'm going to do all I can to make sure you don't lose it." Although Montgomery was considered by Washington to be "soft" and "overrated", he was adored by his troops who fought all the harder because of his concern for their well being. In the fullness of time, his doctrine would be enshrined in the Military Covenant which commits the government to giving the best of care to British service personnel to this day.

Answer: The European Economic Community

Britain joined the European Economic Community (now the European Union). In 1975 a referendum was held to decide whether we should stay in it. A 67% to 33% majority voted in favour of staying in. Even with this large democratic mandate for remaining in the union though, Britain's membership was fraught throughout with dissent in Parliament from so-called "Eurosceptic" MPs who resented the EU's influence over areas such as law, human rights, financial independence and - more than any other issue - the free movement of people between member states to live and work.

In 2016 another referendum was held on British membership and this time a very narrow majority (52% to 48%) voted to leave.