In yesterday's chat, I asked how many educated Brits today know the phrase. BobHale and Robert English provided an unscientific sample that suggests an answer of "very few".

Google confirms that it is an obscure term. Google books provides a few snippets, from which it is difficult to ascertain the meaning.

I ran across it in Mario Pei's The Story of English, page 275 (first edition):

quote:

By an act of 1901, the British monarch was described as "King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions." After the creation of the Irish Free State in 1926, the title was changed to "King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions." The comma which replaced and, known as the "O'Higgins comma" after the Irish constitutional lawyer who insisted upon the new formula, set Ireland off as a distinct political entity.

Further googling revealed that O'Higgins was a prominent figure (and eventual martyr) in Ireland in the '10's and '20's. It also revealed that the title of the Monarch given by Pei was incomplete, the full title being "George V, By the Grace of God, King of ... the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India".

Intrigued, by now, I discovered that QEII has a number of titles, such as:

"Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Saint Christopher and Nevis and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth"

Some of the Commonwealth realms add ", Defender of the Faith".

Following links, I learned, to my astonishment, that Mozambique is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations (the only member that was never a part of the British Empire).

And so to bed.

Interesting. I have only two observations. (1) The style Fidei Defensor 'Defender of the Faith' was granted to Henry VIII by Pope Leo X in 1521; and, (2) the British kings kept the style King of France up until 1801 when the claim was dropped by George III almost nine years after the Kingdom of France had been abolished.

The full list is here.


The longest was that of Mary I and Phillip, from 1554-1556:

By the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol

From 1556-1558, they used the slightly different:

By the Grace of God King and Queen of England, Spain, France, Jerusalem, both the Sicilies and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol

Elizabeth I apparently thought that was a bit much, and was, from 1558-1603:

By the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.

One could learn a lot of history by simply tracking down why the titles changed over the years.