British monarchy and its influence upon governmental institutions

Employment in the Royal Household offers excellent career opportunities for those who wish to take a new direction. Positions in the Royal Household receive good remuneration and benefits. For domestic positions, there are often enhanced by accommodation. The Royal Household is also committed to training and development, including NVQ and vocational training, general management and skills-based training across a range of disciplines - from carriage driving to an in-house diploma for footmen which is widely recognised in its specialised field as a valued vocational qualification.

Jobs at Buckingham Palace and in other Royal residences are usually advertised in national, regional or specialist media in the usual way. Details of the latest vacancies are listed in the Recruitment pages of this section and applications can be made by downloading the standard application form. All positions are also advertised internally to encourage career development and to offer opportunities for promotion to existing employees.

A number of vacancies occur on a regular basis, including positions as housemaids, footmen and secretaries. In addition, nearly 200 Wardens are employed each year for Buckingham Palace's Summer Opening programme. Speculative enquiries are welcome for these posts throughout the year.

Recruitment is in all cases on merit, in terms of qualifications, experience and aptitude. The Royal Household is committed to Equal Opportunities.

ANNIVERSARIES

Since 1917, the Sovereign has sent congratulatory messages to those celebrating their 100th and 105th birthday and every year thereafter, and to those celebrating their Diamond Wedding (60th), 65th, 70th wedding anniversaries and every year thereafter. For many people, receiving a message from The Queen on these anniversaries is a very special moment.

For data privacy reasons, there is no automatic alert from government records for wedding anniversaries. The Department for Work and Pensions informs the Anniversaries Office of birthdays for recipients of UK State pensions. However, to ensure that a message is sent for birthdays and wedding anniversaries alike, an application needs to be made by a relative or friend in advance of the special day.

The Queen's congratulatory messages consist of a card containing a personalised message with a facsimile signature. The card comes in a special envelope, which is delivered through the normal postal channels.

More information about applying for a message and interesting facts about the tradition are contained in this section. 

ROYAL FINANCES

This section provides the latest information on Head of State expenditure, together with information about Royal financial arrangements.

It includes information about the four sources of funding of The Queen (or officials of the Royal Household acting on her behalf). The Civil List meets official expenditure relating to The Queen's duties as Head of State and Head of the Commonwealth. Grants-in-Aid from Parliament provide upkeep of the Royal Palaces and for Royal travel. The Privy Purse is traditional income for the Sovereign's public and private use. Her Majesty's personal income meets entirely private expenditure.

The Queen pays tax on her personal income and capital gains. The Civil List and the Grants-in-Aid are not taxed because they cover official expenditure. The Privy Purse is fully taxable, subject to a deduction for official expenditure.

These pages also contain information about the financial arrangements of other members of the Royal Family, together with information on the Royal Philatelic Collection.

HEAD OF STATE EXPENDITURE 2000-01

Head of State expenditure is the official expenditure relating to The Queen's duties as Head of State and Head of the Commonwealth. Head of State expenditure is met from public funds in exchange for the surrender by The Queen of the revenue from the Crown Estate.

Head of State expenditure for 2001-02, at £35.3 million, is 1.0% higher than in the previous year (a decrease of 1.3% in real terms). The £350,000 increase is mainly attributable to fire precautions work at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, offset by the fact that costs transferred from other funding sources to the Civil List with effect from 1st April 2001 are only included in 2001 Civil List expenditure for nine months. They will be included for a full year in 2002 and subsequently. Costs have been transferred to the Civil List from other funding sources in order to utilise the Civil List reserve brought forward at 1st January 2001. Head of State expenditure has reduced from £84.6 million (expressed in current pounds) in 1991-92, a reduction of 58%.

SOURCES OF FUNDING

The four sources of funding of The Queen, or officials of the Royal Household acting on Her Majesty's behalf, are: the Civil List, the Grants-in-Aid for upkeep of Royal Palaces and for Royal travel, the Privy Purse and The Queen's personal wealth and income.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES

The Prince of Wales does not receive any money from the State. Instead, he receives the annual net surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall and uses it to meet the costs of all aspects of his public and private commitments, and those of Prince William and Prince Harry.

The Duchy's name is derived from the Earldom of Cornwall, which Edward III elevated to a duchy in 1337. The Duchy's founding charter included the gift of estates spread throughout England. It also stated that the Duchy should be in the stewardship of the Heir Apparent, to provide the Heir with an income independent of the Sovereign or the State.

After 660 years, the Duchy's land holdings have become more diversified, but the Duchy is still predominantly an agricultural estate. Today, it consists of around 57,000 hectares, mostly in the South of England. It is run on a commercial basis, as prescribed by the parliamentary legislation which governs its activities.

Prince Charles became the 24th Duke of Cornwall on The Queen's accession in 1952. He is in effect a trustee, and is not entitled to the proceeds of disposals of assets. The Prince must pass on the estate intact, so that it continues to provide an income from its assets for future Dukes of Cornwall.

The Duchy's net surplus for the year to 31 March 2002 was £7,827,000. As a Crown body, the Duchy is tax exempt, but The Prince of Wales voluntarily pays income tax (currently at 40%) on his taxable income from it.

FINANCES OF THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY

Under the Civil List Acts, The Duke of Edinburgh receives an annual parliamentary allowance to enable him to carry out public duties. Since 1993, The Queen has repaid to the Treasury the annual parliamentary allowances received by other members of the Royal family.

The annual amounts payable to members of the Royal family (which are set every ten years) were reset at their 1990 levels for the next ten years, until December 2010. Apart from an increase of £45,000 on the occasion of The Earl of Wessex's marriage, these amounts remain as follows:

Parliamentary annuity (not repaid by The Queen)

Parliamentary annuities (repaid by The Queen)

* Of the £636,000, £175,000 is provided by The Queen to The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, £236,000 to The Duke and Duchess of Kent and £225,000 to Princess Alexandra.

As with the Civil List itself, most of these sums are spent on staff who support public engagements and correspondence.

TAXATION

The Queen has always been subject to Value Added Tax and other indirect taxes and she has paid local rates (Council Tax) on a voluntary basis. In 1992, however, The Queen offered to pay income tax and capital gains tax on a voluntary basis. As from 1993, her personal income has been taxable as for any taxpayer and the Privy Purse is fully taxable, subject to a deduction for official expenditure. The Civil List and the Grants-in-Aid are not remuneration for The Queen and are thus disregarded for tax.

Although The Queen's estate will be subject to Inheritance Tax, bequests from Sovereign to Sovereign are exempt. This is because constitutional impartiality requires an appropriate degree of financial independence for the Sovereign and because the Sovereign is unable to generate significant new wealth through earnings or business activities. Also, the Sovereign cannot retire and so cannot mitigate Inheritance Tax by passing on assets at an early stage to his or her successor.

As a Crown body, the Duchy of Cornwall is tax exempt, but since 1969 The Prince of Wales has made voluntary contributions to the Exchequer. As from 1993, The Prince's income from the Duchy has been fully subject to tax on a voluntary basis. He has always paid tax, including income tax, in all other respects.

ROYAL ASSETS

The Queen does not 'own' the Royal Palaces, art treasures from the Royal Collection, jewellery heirlooms and the Crown Jewels, all of which are held by Her Majesty as Sovereign and not as an individual. They must be passed on to The Queen's successor in due course. The Queen and some members of the Royal Family past and present have made private collections - such as the stamp collection begun by George V. This is separate to the Royal Collection, although exhibitions and loans of stamps are sometimes made.

SYMBOLS

Many of the most familiar objects and events in national life incorporate Royal symbols or represent the Monarchy in some way. Flags, coats of arms, the crowns and treasures used at coronations and some ceremonies, stamps, coins and the singing of the national anthem have strong associations with the Monarchy and play a significant part in our daily existence. Other objects - such as the Great Seal of the Realm - may be less familiar to the general public but still have a powerful symbolic role.

NATIONAL ANTHEM

'God Save The King' was a patriotic song first publicly performed in London in 1745, which came to be referred to as the National Anthem from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The words and tune are anonymous, and may date back to the seventeenth century.

In September 1745 the 'Young Pretender' to the British Throne, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, defeated the army of King George II at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. In a fit of patriotic fervour after news of Prestonpans had reached London, the leader of the band at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, arranged 'God Save The King' for performance after a play. It was a tremendous success and was repeated nightly thereafter. This practice soon spread to other theatres, and the custom of greeting the Monarch with the song as he or she entered a place of public entertainment was thus established.

There is no authorised version of the National Anthem as the words are a matter of tradition. Additional verses have been added down the years, but these are rarely used. The words used are those sung in 1745, substituting 'Queen' for 'King' where appropriate. On official occasions, only the first verse is usually sung, as follows:

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.

An additional verse is occasionally sung:

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour,
Long may she reign.
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the Queen.

The British tune has been used in other countries - as European visitors to Britain in the eighteenth century noticed the advantage of a country possessing such a recognised musical symbol - including Germany, Russia, Switzerland and America (where use of the tune continued after independence). Some 140 composers, including Beethoven, Haydn and Brahms, have used the tune in their compositions.

ROYAL WARRANTS

Royal Warrants are granted to people or companies who have regularly supplied goods or services for a minimum of five consecutive years to The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother or The Prince of Wales. They are advised by the Lord Chamberlain who is head of the Royal Household and chairman of the Royal Household Tradesmen's Warrants Committee. Each of these four members of the Royal family can grant only one warrant to any individual business. However, a business may hold warrants from more than one member of the Royal family and a handful of companies holds all four.

The warrants are a mark of recognition that tradesmen are regular suppliers of goods and services to the Royal households. Strict regulations govern the warrant, which allows the grantee or his company to use the legend 'By Appointment' and display the Royal Arms on his products, such as stationery, advertisements and other printed material, in his or her premises and on delivery vehicles.

A Royal Warrant is initially granted for five years, after which time it comes up for review by the Royal Household Tradesmen's Warrants Committee. Warrants may not be renewed if the quality or supply for the product or service is insufficient, as far as the relevant Royal Household is concerned. A Warrant may, however, be cancelled at any time and is automatically reviewed if the grantee dies or leaves the business, or if the firm goes bankrupt or is sold. There are rules to ensure that high standards are maintained.

Since the Middle Ages, tradesmen who have acted as suppliers of goods and services to the Sovereign have received formal recognition. In the beginning, this patronage took the form of royal charters given collectively to various guilds in trades and crafts which later became known as livery companies. Over the centuries, the relationship between the Crown and individual tradesmen was formalised by the issue of royal warrants.

In the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas Hewytt was appointed to 'Serve the Court with Swannes and Cranes and all kinds of Wildfoule'. A hard-working Anne Harris was appointed as the 'King's Laundresse'. Elizabeth I's household book listed, among other things, the Yeomen Purveyors of 'Veales, Beeves & Muttons; Sea & Freshwater Fish'. In 1684 goods and services to the Palace included a Haberdasher of Hats, a Watchmaker in Reversion, an Operator for the Teeth and a Goffe-Club Maker. According to the Royal Kalendar of 1789, a Pin Maker, a Mole Taker, a Card Maker and a Rat Catcher are among other tradesmen appointed to the court. A notable omission was the Bug Taker - at that time one of the busiest functionaries at court but perhaps not one to be recorded in a Royal Kalendar. Records also show that in 1776 Mr Savage Bear was 'Purveyor of Greens Fruits and Garden Things', and that in 1820 Mr William Giblet was supplying meat to the table of George IV.

Warrant holders today represent a large cross-section of British trade and industry (there is a small number of foreign names), ranging from dry cleaners to fishmongers, and from agricultural machinery to computer software. A number of firms have a record of Royal Warrants reaching back over more than 100 years. Warrant-holding firms do not provide their goods or services free to the Royal households, and all transactions are conducted on a strictly commercial basis. There are currently approximately 800 Royal Warrant holders, holding over 1,100 Royal Warrants between them (some have more than one Royal Warrant).

On 25 May 1840, a gathering of 'Her Majesty's Tradesmen' held a celebration in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday. They later decided to make this an annual event and formed themselves for the purpose into an association which eventually became known as the Royal Warrant Holders Association.

The Association acts both in a supervisory role to ensure that the standards of quality and reliability in their goods and services are upheld, and as a channel of communication for its members in their dealings with the various departments of the Royal Household. The Association ensures that the Royal Warrant is not used by those not entitled and is correctly applied by those who are.

BANK NOTES AND COINAGE

There are close ties - past and present - between the Monarchy and the monetary system. They can be seen, for example, in the title of the 'Royal Mint' and the representation of the monarch on all circulating British coinage.

The first coins were struck in the British Isles 2000 years ago using designs copied from Greek coins. Following the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, the Roman coinage system was introduced. After the decline of Roman power in Britain from the fifth century AD, the silver penny eventually emerged as the dominant coin circulating in England but no standardized system was yet in place.

In the eighth century, as strong kings emerged with power over more than one region, they began to centralize the currency. Offa introduced a new coinage in the form of the silver penny, which for centuries was to be the basis of the English currency. Alfred introduced further changes by authorising mints in the burhs he had founded. By 800 AD coins regularly bore the names of the kings for whom they were struck. A natural development was the representation of their own images on their coins. Coinage played a part in spreading the fame of kings - the more often coins passed through men's hands, and the further afield they were taken by plunder or trade, the more famous their royal sponsors became. Athelstan (d. 939) is the first English king to be shown on his coins wearing a crown or circlet. For many people, the king's image on coins was the only likeness of the monarch which they were likely to see in their lifetimes.

By the end of the tenth century the English monarchy had the most sophisticated coinage system in western Europe. The system allowed kings to exploit the wealth of a much enlarged kingdom and to raise the very large sums of money which they had to use as bribes to limit the effect of the Vikings' invasions at the end of the tenth century.

For five centuries in England, until 1280, silver pennies were the only royal coins in circulation. Gradually a range of denominations began to emerge, and by the mid fourteenth century a regular coinage of gold was introduced. The gold sovereign came into existence in 1489 under King Henry VII. Throughout this period, counterfeiting coinage was regarded as a grave crime against the state amounting to high treason and was punishable by death under an English statute of 1350. The crime was considered to be an interference with the administration of government and the representation of the monarch. Until the nineteenth century the Royal Mint was based at the Tower of London, and for centuries was therefore under the direct control of the monarch.

The English monarchy was the first monarchy in the British Isles to introduce a coinage for practical and propaganda purposes. Only one early Welsh king, Hywel Dda, minted a coin, though it may not have been produced in Wales itself. The first Scottish king to issue a coinage was David I (d. 1153). Until the reign of Alexander III (1249-1286) Scottish coinage was only issued sparingly. During the reign of Alexander III coins began to be minted in much larger quantities, a result of increasing trade with Europe and the importation of foreign silver.

After the death of Alexander III in 1289, Scotland fell into a long period of internal strife and war with England. A nominal coinage was issued under John Balliol c.1296 and then in reign of Robert the Bruce (1306-1329), but the first substantial issue of coinage did not come until the reign of David II (1329-1371). The accession by James VI to the English throne in 1603 saw the fixing of value of the Scottish coinage to a ratio of 1 / 12 with English coinage. After the Act of Union in 1707 unique Scottish coinage came to an end. The last Scottish minted coins were the sterling issues based on the English denominations that were issued until 1709 with the "E" mintmark for Edinburgh. Some British coinages have featured Scottish devices, the Royal Arms of Scotland or the thistle emblem during the 20th century, but these are a part of the coinage of the United Kingdom, not unique to Scotland.

In the United Kingdom a streamlining of coinage production took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Until the Restoration of Charles II, coins were struck by hand. In 1816, there was a major change in the British coinage, powered by the Industrial Revolution. The Royal Mint moved from The Tower of London to new premises on nearby Tower Hill, and acquired powerful new steam powered coining presses. Further changes took place in the 1960s, when the Mint moved to modern premises at Llantrisant, near Cardiff.

After over a thousand years and many changes in production techniques, the monarch continues to be depicted on the obverse of modern UK coinage. Certain traditions are observed in this representation. From the time of Charles II onwards a tradition developed of successive monarchs being represented on the coinage facing in the opposite direction to their immediate predecessor. There was an exception to this in the brief reign of Edward VIII, who liked portraits of himself facing to the left, even though he should have faced to the right according to tradition. The designs for proposed coins in the Mint collection show Edward VIII facing to the left. The tradition has been restored since the reign of George VI.

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