Voltaire
The Act of Union 1707 declared the joining of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to a new Kingdom of Great Britain. They also styled themselves Queen/King of France; however, none of them made any official move to depose Louis XIV and his successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, or the First French Republic that followed them. The monarchs were:
Queen Anne
King George I
King George II
King George III
During the French Revolution, the monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792, replaced with the French Republic. In the War of the First Coalition British–French negotiations were held in Lille from July to November 1797. The French demanded that the English monarch drop the title. James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury was prepared to omit it from the king's signature to the envisaged peace treaty but had not conceded further by the time the talks collapsed. In the Commons William Pitt the Younger called the title "a harmless feather, at most, in the crown of England" In 1800, the Act of Union joined the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland to a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. George III chose this opportunity to drop his claim to the now defunct French throne, whereupon the fleurs-de-lis, part of the coat of arms of all claimant Kings of France since the time of Edward III was also removed from the British royal arms. Britain recognised the French Republic by the Treaty of Amiens of 1802. Dropping the French claim resulted in a change of status for the Channel Islands. The constitutional relationship of the Islands with Great Britain has never been enshrined in a formal constitutional document. Until 1802 this link existed through the Crown's French claim. Starting in 1802 the islands became British Crown dependencies.
We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.262
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