Role
The duchy is not the property of The Crown, but is instead the personal (inherited) property of the monarch and has been since 1399, when the Dukedom of Lancaster, held by Henry of Bolingbroke (Henry IV), merged with the crown on his appropriation of the throne (after the dispossession from Richard II). The Loyal Toast, 'The Queen, the Duke of Lancaster' is still in frequent use within the Duchy.
The chief officer of the Duchy is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a high position which is sometimes a cabinet post but always a ministerial post. Since for at least the last two centuries the estate has been run by a deputy, the Chancellor has rarely had any significant duties pertaining to management of the Duchy itself. He is usually available as a minister without portfolio. In recent times his duties, administrative, financial and legal, have been said to occupy an average of one day a week.
The monarch derives the Privy Purse from the revenues of the Duchy. The surplus for the year ended 31 March 2010 was £13.382 million and the Duchy was valued at nearly £348 million. The lands of the Duchy are not to be confused with the Crown Estate, whose revenues have been handed to the Treasury since the 18th century in exchange for the receipt of a yearly civil list payment.
Read more about this topic: Duchy Of Lancaster
Famous quotes containing the word role:
“My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.”
—Elma Lewis (b. 1921)