Why doesn't England have a president?

Answer 1

Because it has always been a monarchy, apart from a brief period after the English Civil War when Oliver Cromwell and (subseqently) his son Thomas headed a Republic from 1649-60.

Britain has always been ruled by kings or queens, dating right back to pre-Roman times when various parts of it were divided up into seperate small kingdoms, who were often at war with each other. England became a united country under one monarch under the rule of the Saxon king Alfred the Great, and has remained as such ever since, although the Royal Houses who have ruled over it have changed over the Centuries (the Normans swept the Saxons from power following their invasion of England in 1066, and established the Plantagenet dynasty, which was in turn replaced by the Tudor dynasty in the late 15th century, and so on). Wales was a seperate kingdom up until 1285, and was never really regarded as ruled by England until the collapse of the Welsh Rebellion under Owen Glyndwr in 1410. Scotland remained a seperate kingdom up until 1745, when it was absorbed into the UK following the Battle of Bannockburn.

Up until the outbreak of the English Civil War, the monarch was what is known as an 'absolute monarch'- that is, they had the final word in Government and influenced their ministers and civil servants as to what they should do, and how they should run the country. By the mid-17th Century this was becoming resented by the British people, who felt that the monarch should be accountable to an elected Parliament and not the other way round. But the reigning monarch of the time, Charles 1st, believed in what had always been known as 'the Divine Right of Kings'- that is, he seriously believed (like many of his predecessors) that he had been specially appointed by God to lead the nation and protect it's best interests. Thus the Civil War began, with the Parliamentary forces being led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell did not want to execute the king, merely have him relinquish his absolute authority and agree to his power being handed over to an elected Parliament, with the King remaining as Head of State- he tried very hard to persuade Charles 1st to agree to this, but the king would not hear of it, and even after being arrested several times and held in custody, always broke out again to lead his Royalist forces against the Parliamentarians. Cromwell, exasperated, finally had Charles 1st executed in 1649, and ruled England as a Republic until his death in 1658 under the title of 'Lord Protector'. His son Thomas succeeded him for another two years, but when he died in 1660 Charles 1st's son (also named Charles), who had been in exile in France, returned to the throne. This period in British history is known as 'The Restoration'.

But things were never to be quite the same again after the Civil War- although Charles 2nd retained a lot of power, Cromwell had succeeded in establishing a Parliament that was elected and kept some of the monarch's power in check. Over the following Centuries, the power of Parliament increased, with the monarch holding less and less actual governmental power and with more and more people being permitted to vote (initially, the vote was restricted under Cromwell to male landowners over a certain age). The last English monarch to wield any significant ruling authority was Queen Victoria.

Nowadays, the power of the sovereign is minimal- the present Queen, Elizabeth 2nd, has to approve the appointment of a new Prime Minister and officially open new sessions of Parliament, but in practice she couldn't actually refuse to do so- her role is really ceremonial. Nonetheless, most British people WANT the country to retain a monarch as Head of State, and although there have periodically been rumblings of dissent over the past 100 years, with a minority of people wanting to abolish the monarchy and replace it with an elected President, the majority want the monarchy to stay.