Unit 17. The Continuation of the Hundred Years` War. Henry V 4 страница

She became Queen 20^th of June, 1837. At the earliest period of her reign Victoria was dominated by her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. The urbane and sophisticated prime minister fostered the new queen's self-confidence and enthusiasm for her role; he also encouraged her to ignore or minimize social problems and to attribute all discontent and unrest to the activities of a small group of agitators. Because of Melbourne, Victoria became an ardent Whig. Another person who played an important role in her life was her husband Prince Albert of Coburg-Gotha. At the beginning of their marriage the queen was insistent that her husband should have no share in the government of the country. But on Melbourne's suggestion, the prince was allowed to start seeing the dispatches, then to be present when the queen saw her ministers. The years of their family life were called the Albertine monarchy. A visible sign of the prince's power and influence was the building of the royal residences of Osborne, on the Isle of Wight, and Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The queen soon came to hold the Highlanders in more esteem than she held any other of her subjects. The royal couple's withdrawal to Scotland and the Isle of Wight bore witness to a new sort of British monarchy. In their quest for privacy and intimacy Albert and Victoria adopted a way of life that mirrored that of their middle-class subjects, admittedly on a grander scale. Although Albert was interested in intellectual and scientific matters, Victoria's tastes were closer to those of most of her people. She enjoyed the novels of Charles Dickens and patronized the circus and waxwork exhibitions. The first years of her reign were also dominated by the Chartist Movement. The Chartists demanded the right to be elected into Parliament and no property qualifications for MPs. Victoria gave her full support to the government's policy of repression of the Chartists and believed the workers in her realm to be contented and loyal. In 1848 she rejoiced in the failure of the last great Chartist demonstration in London. For both the queen and the prince consort the highlight of their reign came in 1851, with the opening of the Great Exhibition. Albert poured himself into the task of organizing the international trade show that became a symbol of the Victorian Age. Housed in the architectural marvel of the Crystal Palace, a splendid, greenhouse-inspired glass building erected in Hyde Park, the Great Exhibition displayed Britain's wealth and technological achievements to a wondering world. Profits from the Great Exhibition funded what became the South Kensington complex of colleges and museums. After the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) there was a period, not ending until the election of 1868, when politics tended to consist of a series of temporary alliances between splinter groups and no single group could guarantee its extended control over the House of Commons: the golden age of the private member, a condition rendering active political intervention by the crown not only possible but sometimes even necessary. The tradition also persisted that the sovereign had a special part to play in foreign affairs and could conduct them alone with a secretary of state. Victoria and Albert had relatives throughout Europe, they visited and were visited by other monarchs. Victoria and Albert insisted on the monarch`s leading role in the foreign politics. On the eve of the Crimean War (1854-1856) the royal pair encountered a wave of unpopularity, and Albert was suspected, without any foundation, of trying to influence the government in favour of the Russian cause. There was, however, a marked revival of royalist sentiment as the war wore on. The queen personally superintended the committees of ladies who organized relief for the wounded and eagerly seconded the efforts of Florence Nightingale: she visited crippled soldiers in the hospitals and instituted the Victoria Cross for gallantry. With the death of Prince Albert in December, 1861, the Albertine monarchy came to an end. After his death she wore mourning for the rest of her life and it took her much time to return to the political affairs. Among the other very influential political figures of Victoria`s reign there were B. Disraelli, W. Gladstone. The former was a Conservative and while being the Prime Minister he paid much attention to the foreign policy of the country. W. Gladstone was a Whig and did much for the domestic policy of the Empire. He got the nickname "the Great Old man". Albert disliked Disraeli and approved of Gladstone. One of the bonds shared by Victoria and Disraeli was a romantic attachment to the East and the idea of empire. Although she supported Disraeli's reform of the franchise in 1867, Victoria had little interest in or sympathy with his program of social reform; she was, however, entranced by his imperialism and by his assertive foreign policy. She applauded his brilliant maneuvering, which led to the British purchase of slightly less than half of the shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 (a move that prevented the canal from falling entirely under French control. Gladstone came to power twice. His relationships with the Queen were not stable. She made no secret of her hostility, she hoped he would retire. The queen abhorred Gladstone's lack of Disraelian vision of Britain's role in the world. Over the abandonment of Kandahar in Afghanistan, in 1881 she was angry as never before. Victoria convinced herself that Gladstone's government, dominated by Radicals, threatened the stability of the nation. Nevertheless, Victoria did act as an important mediating influence between the two houses to bring about the compromise that resulted in the third parliamentary Reform Act in 1884. It extended the vote to agricultural workers and equalized representation on the basis of 50,000 voters per each single-member legislative constituency. The idea of "Home Rule" «гомруль» appeared. It was the idea to secure internal autonomy for Ireland within the British Empire. Prime Minister Gladstone was converted to Home Rule by 1885, but it was rejected by Parliament in 1886. Gladstone introduced a second Home Rule Bill in 1893; it was defeated in the House of Lords. She disliked disorder and regarded the suggestion of Irish Home Rule as sheer disloyalty. The South African War (1899-1902) dominated her final years. She was very popular. More and more fully with advancing years, she was able to satisfy the imagination of the middle class-and the poorer class-of her subjects. She ruled for 64 years and died in 1901. She was succeeded by her son Edward VII.

I. Read the text, translate it into Russian.

II. Ask 5 questions to the text.

III. Summarize the text in 8 sentences.

Text 12. Great Britain before and during World War I. Edward VII. George V

Edward VII was the king of the United Kingdom and of the British dominions from 1901 and was an immensely popular and affable sovereign and a leader of society. He was the second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, his first name was Albert Edward. He attended the universities of both Oxford and Cambridge. His love-affair with an actress while serving with an Army unit in Ireland caused Victoria to hold him partly responsible for the death of the prince consort, who had indeed taken his son's brief liaison much to heart before succumbing to typhoid. Subsequently, Victoria excluded her heir from any real initiation into affairs of state. He was particularly given to racing, yachting, and game-bird shooting. His social activities involved him in several scandals. He succeeded to the throne as Edward VII following Victoria's death in 1901, and was crowned in 1902. His reign did much to restore lustre to a monarchy that had shone somewhat dimly during Victoria's long seclusion as a widow. In 1902 he resumed his tours of Europe. His geniality and felicitously worded addresses (conducted in French) during a state visit to Paris in 1903 helped pave the way, by winning popularity among French citizens of all ranks. Relations with his nephew the German emperor William II were not always easy, either officially or personally. Although incapable of prolonged mental exertion, Edward was fortunate in his judgment of men. His support for the great military reforms of the secretary of state for war, Richard Burdon Haldane, and for the First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher in his naval reforms did much to avert British unpreparedness when World War I started.

George V was the king of the UK from 1910 to 1936. He was the second son of Prince Albert Edward, later King Edward VII. He served in the navy until the death (1892) of his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, brought the need for more specialized training as eventual heir to the throne. Formidable difficulties faced the new king early in his reign. The constitutional struggle to curb the power of the House of Lords was unresolved, and the Liberal government secured an undertaking from the king that, should the lords not yield, he would create sufficient new peers to overcome the opposition. After the Liberal success in the election of December 1910, the House of Lords relented and passed the Parliament Act (1911), and the king did not have to fulfill his pledge. Respect for King George greatly increased during World War I, and he visited the front in France several times. After World War I the king was confronted by an outbreak of serious industrial unrest. He was also faced with a difficult decision on the resignation of Andrew Bonar Law in 1923, when he had to find a new prime minister. Both Lord Curzon and Stanley Baldwin had supporters among the elder statesmen whom George consulted, but, believing Baldwin had more support in the Conservative Party and that the prime minister should be in the House of Commons, the king selected him. King George was seriously ill at the end of 1928, and for the rest of his reign he had to be extremely careful of his health. In 1931 the collapse of the pound and the consequent financial crisis split the Labour administration. To secure strong government, he persuaded Ramsay MacDonald and a part of his Cabinet to remain in office and join with Conservative and Liberal ministers in created a national coalition government. The celebration of George's silver jubilee (May 1935) enabled the public to express its affection and admiration for him.

I. Read the text, translate it into Russian.

II. Ask 5 questions to the text.

III. Summarize the text in 8 sentences.

Text 13. Great Britain before and during World War II. Edward VIII, George VI

Edward VIII was the king of the United Kingdom from the 20th of January to the 10th of December 1936, when he abdicated in order to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson. He was the only British sovereign ever voluntarily to resign the crown. The eldest child of King George V and Princess Mary of Teck he became heir to the throne on the accession of his father. After the outbreak of World War I he served as a staff officer. After the war and through the early 1920s he undertook extensive goodwill tours of the British Empire; and, after an illness that his father suffered in 1928, the prince took an increasing interest in national affairs. In 1932, after unemployment had reached unprecedented levels, he toured workingmen's clubs throughout Britain and enlisted more than 200,000 men and women in occupational schemes. During these years his popularity rivaled that of his grandfather King Edward VII when the latter was prince of Wales. In 1930 King George V gave him Fort Belvedere, an 18th-century house belonging to the crown, near Sunningdale. The Fort, as he always called it, gave him privacy and the sense of making a home that was entirely his own. He worked in the garden and woodlands, becoming in the 1930s something of an authority on horticulture, especially on the growing of roses. He soon began to regard the Fort as a refuge from the official world that he increasingly disliked. There he entertained a private circle of friends, not drawn from the conventional aristocracy and perhaps better characterized as part of the "high society" of the time. In 1930 the prince's friendship with Mrs. Simpson began. Mrs. Simpson, divorced from a U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1927, married Ernest Simpson in 1928. Members of a private circle of friends, the Simpsons were frequently in the company of the prince, and by 1934 he was deeply in love with Mrs. Simpson. It was at this point, before he could discuss the matter with his father, that George V died and Edward was proclaimed king. As king, Edward VIII set in motion drastic economies in the royal estates. In November he opened Parliament and then toured distressed areas in South Wales. Meanwhile his attempts to gain the royal family's acceptance of Mrs. Simpson, who had obtained a preliminary decree of divorce met with firm opposition, backed by the Church of England (of which he was the head) and most politicians in both Britain and the Commonwealth. (Winston Churchill, then out of power, was his only notable ally.) His affair with Mrs. Simpson evoked much comment in American and continental European newspapers and journals but, until nearly the end of his kingship, was kept out of the British press through governmental persuasions and pressures. Discussions of a morganatic marriage were pursued, but the Prime Minister Baldwin assured him that this was impracticable. The king therefore made his final decision and submitted his abdication. The instrument of abdication was supported by Parliament, and on the same evening the former king spoke on a radio broadcast: "I have found it impossible to carry on the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge the duties of King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love." That night he left for the Continent and soon married Mrs. Simpson. He was given the title of the Duke of Winsdor. For the next two years the duke and duchess lived mainly in France, visiting various other European countries, including Germany (October 1937), where the duke was honoured by Nazi officials and had an interview with Adolf Hitler. The outbreak of World War II failed to close the breach between the duke and his family, and, after visiting London, he accepted a position as liaison officer with the French. On the fall of France he traveled to Madrid, where he was subjected to a fanciful plan of the Nazis to remake him king and to use him against the established government in England. When he reached Lisbon, he was offered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill the governorship of the Bahamas, a British colony in the West Indies, and he remained there for the duration of the war (1940-45). After 1945 he lived in Paris. Short visits to England followed in succeeding years-notably, to attend the funerals of his brother King George VI (1952) and their mother, Queen Mary (1953)-but it was not until 1967 that, for the first time, the duke and duchess were invited to attend an official public ceremony with other members of the royal family-initially, the unveiling of a plaque to Queen Mary at Marlborough House. After their deaths, the duke and the duchess were buried side by side at Frogmore, within the grounds of Windsor Castle.

George VIcame to the throne in 1936. He was the second son of the future king George V. As the prince he served in the Royal Navy, the Royal Naval Air Service, and the Royal Air Force and then attended Trinity College, Cambridge. He was married to Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon. He had two children: Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. He was officially proclaimed king in 1936, following the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. He took the name of George VI and was crowned in 1937. Before the outbreak of World War II, the king affirmed Anglo-French solidarity and formed a close friendship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy toward Germany and Italy. In May 1940, when the House of Commons forced Chamberlain to resign, the king wished to appoint Edward Halifax to the premiership but was induced to select Winston Churchill, whose wartime leadership he then supported unreservedly. During the war he visited his armies on several battle fronts. Although he was an important symbolic leader of the British people during World War II, his reign was perhaps most important for the accelerating evolution of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the postwar transformation of Great Britain into a welfare state. He earned respect by scrupulously observing the responsibilities and limitations of a constitutional monarch and by overcoming the handicap of a severe stammer.

I. Read the text, translate it into Russian.

II. Ask 5 questions to the text.

III. Summarize the text in 8 sentences.

Text 14. Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II is the elder daughter of King George VI. She had little prospect of getting the throne until her uncle, Edward VIII abdicated in her father's favour in 1936. The princess was privately educated. Early in 1947 Princess Elizabeth went with the king and queen to South Africa. After her return, there was an announcement of her engagement to her distant cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten of the Royal Navy, formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. The wedding took place in Westminster Abbey in November, 1947. On the eve of the wedding her father, the king, conferred upon the bridegroom the titles of Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. They took residence at Clarence House in London. Their first child, Prince Charles was born in November, 1948. In the summer of 1951 the health of King George VI entered into a serious decline, and Princess Elizabeth represented him on various state occasions. In 1952 George VI died, and Elizabeth became queen. The first three months of her reign, the period of full mourning for her father, were passed in comparative seclusion. But in the summer, after she had moved from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, she undertook the routine duties of the sovereign and carried out her first state opening of Parliament in November, 1952. Her coronation was held at Westminster Abbey in June , 1953. Beginning in November 1953 the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh made a six-month round-the-world tour of the Commonwealth, which included the first visit to Australia and New Zealand by a reigning British monarch. In 1957, after state visits to various European nations, she and the duke visited Canada and the United States. In 1961 she made the first royal British tour of the Indian subcontinent in 50 years, and she was also the first reigning British monarch to visit South America and the Persian Gulf countries. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, her son Prince Charles became heir apparent; he was named Prince of Wales in 1958The queen's other children were Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. The queen seemed increasingly aware of the modern role of the monarchy. She is known to favour simplicity in court life and is also known to take a serious and informed interest in government business, aside from the traditional and ceremonial duties. Her financial and property holdings have made her one of the world's richest people.

I. Read the text, translate it into Russian.

II. Ask 5 questions to the text.

III. Summarize the text in 8 sentences.

Revision

Answer the questions:

How long did the Hundred Years` War last?

What was the greatest victory won by Henry V?

When did Wat Tyler`s Rebellion take place?

Why did the Wars of the Roses get their name?

What sort of person was Henry VII?

What happened to Henry VIII`s 2^nd wife?

Why did Mary I decide to marry the Spanish king?