Additional Reading

Text A

The name Britain is very ancient: the earliest known form is believed to date back to about 325 BC.

The term Great Britain was widely used during the reign of King James VI of Scotland and England to describe the island, on which co –existed two separate kingdoms ruled over by the same monarch. Though England and Scotland each remained legally in existence as a separate state with its own parliament, collectively they were sometimes referred to as Great Britain. In 1707, an Act of Union joined both states. That Act used two different terms to describe the new all island state, a “united Kingdom” and the “Kingdom of Great Britain”.

In 1801, under a new Act of Union, this kingdom merged with the Kingdom of Ireland, over which the monarch of Great Britain had ruled. The new kingdom was called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, twenty- six of Ireland’s thirty- two countries left to form a separate Irish Free State. The remaining kingdom is now known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which also now includes a number of Overseas Territories.

Notes

1. B.C. – before Christ – до нашей эры

2. An Act of Union – 1) Уния Англии с Шотландией (1707);

2)Уния Великобритании с Ирландией (1801)

Text B

Rule Britannia

Britannia rule – what? Well, until quite recently, she ruled the waves -or so patriotic British people liked to think when they sang a traditional sea-song of that name. Now, there's very little Royal Navy left for her to rule the waves with.

Britannia was the Roman name for Britain. In A. D. 161, during the reign of the Emperor Antonius, a coin was issued showing a seated figure of "Britannia", dressed in armour and looking out to sea. Britannia became a symbol of the land of the same name. After Roman times, the lady was not seen again until three hundred years ago when King Charles II used the figure on his coins. The king's friend, Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond, was the model for the figure and many people liked to see the figure of the Duchess on the coin.

Britannia has continued to appear on the British coins since then, but with the introduction of decimal currency, it looked as if she would disappear forever. However, the story has a happy ending. Nobody could decide what to put on the new 50 pence coin. The choice was between Britannia and the Royal Arms. Most people thought it would be a pity if Britannia disappeared after such a long time and so she was chosen in preference to the Royal Arms. What's even nicer, she's in a better position than before. Now she appears not on their smallest coin, but on the largest.

Text C

When visitors from abroad come to Britain one of the things they often take back with them is wool or woollen cloth, for Britain has been famous for its wool for centuries.

All sorts of people bred sheep for centuries before the Norman Con­quest, but after that it was the churches who led the wool business. The Domesday Book (a special register of all lands and real estate made by William the Conqueror himself) lists 13,000 sheep as belonging to Ely Abbey, and by the 13th century Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire was producing more than 28,000 lb of wool a year.

During the next two or three centuries people made immense fortunes from wool – sometimes from dishonest dealing, mixing odd bits and pieces with good wool, substituting old wool for new, or smuggling wool and fleeces to avoid paying export taxes.

People in power, not only kings, but clothiers, merchants and land­lords, thought only of the money they could make out of wool. Landlords took over common land for sheep rearing, thus throwing many people off their holdings.

Clothiers employed children of six and seven years old, and kept down weavers' wages. Kings used wool to raise their taxes and wool exports as part of their foreign policy.

There is hardly a place in the country which hasn't got some connection with the wool trade, either through sheep farming, spin­ning, weaving and other cloth-making processes, or shipping the wool abroad.

Like gold in other countries, wool has become in Great Britain both the source of all the wealth and the reason for all the grief.