Parliament of England in the context of "Dissolution of the Monasteries"

The constitution of the United Kingdom comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document, thus it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and its predecessor, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, have recognised and affirmed constitutional principles such as parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, and upholding international law. It also recognises that some Acts of Parliament have special constitutional status. These include the Magna Carta, which in 1215 required the King to call a "common counsel" (now called Parliament) to represent the 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 Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Claim of Right Act 1689 cemented Parliament's position as the supreme law-making body, and said that the "election of members of Parliament ought to be free". The Treaty of Union in 1706 and the Acts of Union 1707 united the Kingdoms of England, Wales and Scotland, the Acts of Union 1800 joined Ireland, but the Irish Free State separated after the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, leaving Northern Ireland within the UK. After struggles for universal suffrage, the UK guaranteed every adult citizen over 21 years the equal right to vote in the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. After World War II, the UK became a founding member of the Council of Europe to uphold human rights, and the United Nations to guarantee international peace and security. The UK was a member of the European Union, joining its predecessor in 1973, but left in 2020. The UK is also a founding member of the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization to participate in regulating the global economy.

Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She made vigorous attempts to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament but, during her five-year reign, more than 280 religious dissenters were burned at the stake in what became known as the Marian persecutions, leading later commentators to label her "Bloody Mary".

Mary was the only surviving child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She was declared illegitimate and barred from the line of succession following the annulment of her parents' marriage in 1533, but was restored via the Third Succession Act 1543. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became terminally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had taken place during his reign. Upon his death, leading politicians proclaimed their Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as queen instead. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane.

The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in Western Europe from 1707 to the end of 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the Kingdom of England (including Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but the distinct legal systems—English law and Scots law—remained in use, as did distinct educational systems and religious institutions, namely the Church of England and the Church of Scotland remaining as the national churches of England and Scotland respectively.

The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland. Since the reign of James, who had been the first to refer to himself as "king of Great Britain", a political union between the two mainland British kingdoms had been repeatedly attempted and aborted by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) did not produce a clear Protestant heir and endangered the line of succession, with the laws of succession differing in the two kingdoms and threatening a return to the throne of Scotland of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart, exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative chambers which occupy the building. The palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom; "Westminster" has become a metonym for the UK Parliament and the British Government, and the Westminster system of government commemorates the name of the palace. The Elizabeth Tower of the palace, nicknamed Big Ben, is a landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general. The palace has been a Grade I listed building since 1970 and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

The building was originally constructed in the eleventh century as a royal palace and was the primary residence of the kings of England until 1512, when a fire destroyed the royal apartments. The monarch moved to the adjacent Palace of Whitehall, but the remainder of the palace continued to serve as the home of the Parliament of England, which had met there since the 13th century. In 1834 a second, larger fire destroyed the majority of the palace, but the twelfth century Westminster Hall was saved and incorporated into the replacement building.

Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights sealed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.

After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name "Magna Carta", to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes. His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. However, Magna Carta was not unique; other legal documents of its time, both in England and beyond, made broadly similar statements of rights and limitations on the powers of the Crown. The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn. As time went by and the fledgling Parliament of England passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.

The Bill of Rights 1689 (1 Will. & Mar. Sess. 2. c. 2) (sometimes known as the Bill of Rights 1688) is an act of the Parliament of England that set out certain basic civil rights and changed the succession to the English Crown. It remains a crucial statute in English constitutional law.

Largely based on the ideas of political theorist John Locke, the Bill sets out a constitutional requirement for the Crown to seek the consent of the people as represented in Parliament. As well as setting limits on the powers of the monarch, it established the rights of Parliament, including regular parliaments, free elections, and parliamentary privilege. It also listed individual rights, including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the right not to pay taxes levied without the approval of Parliament. Finally, it described and condemned several misdeeds of James II of England. The Bill of Rights received royal assent on 16 December 1689. It is a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William III and Mary II in February 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England, displacing James II, who was stated to have abdicated and left the throne vacant.

The Treaty of Union is the name usually now given to the treaty which led to the creation of the new political state of Great Britain. The treaty, effective since 1707, brought the Kingdom of England (which already included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland together to be "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". At the time it was more often referred to as the Articles of Union.

The Treaty details were agreed on 22 July 1706, and separate Acts of Union were then passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland to put the agreed Articles into effect. The Treaty of Union was eventually passed in the Parliament of Scotland. The first Parliament of Scotland was a unicameral Parliament that was first mentioned on record in the 13th century, when a meeting took place in Kirkliston in 1235. The Parliament met until "prorogued sine die" following months of intense debate, with 110 voting in favour for the treaty to 67 against. The passing of the vote has been described as a vote "to end Scotland's independence".

The Acts of Union refer to two acts of Parliament, one by the Parliament of Scotland in March 1707, followed shortly thereafter by an equivalent act of the Parliament of England. They put into effect the international Treaty of Union agreed on 22 July 1706, which politically joined the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into a single "political state" named Great Britain, with Queen Anne as its sovereign. The English and Scottish acts of ratification took effect on 1 May 1707, creating the new kingdom, with its parliament based in the Palace of Westminster.

The two countries had shared a monarch since the "personal" Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his cousin Elizabeth I to become (in addition) 'James I of England', styled James VI and I. Attempts had been made to try to unite the two separate countries, in 1606, 1667, and in 1689 (following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and subsequent deposition of James II of England by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange), but it was not until the early 18th century that both nations via separate groups of English and Scots Royal Commissioners and their respective political establishments, came to support the idea of an international "Treaty of political, monetary and trade Union", albeit for different reasons.

Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈdʒɛfri/ /ˈtʃɔːsər/; JEF-ree CHAW-sər; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, writer and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the 'father of English literature', or alternatively, the 'father of English poetry'. He was the first writer to be buried in what has since become Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his ten-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in public service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat and member of the Parliament of England, having been elected as shire knight for Kent.