A north west view of Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.

Westminster Abbey is a gothic abbey church just to the west of the Palace of Westminster, London. It is a traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. A first church was founded at the site in the 7th century, at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245, on the orders of King Henry III. Since 1560, the building is no longer an abbey nor a cathedral, but a Church's of England "Royal Peculiar"—a church responsible directly to the sovereign. Since the coronations in 1066 of both King Harold and William the Conqueror, every English and British monarch, with the exceptions of Edward V and Edward VIII, have been crowned in Westminster Abbey. There have been at least 16 royal weddings at the abbey since 1100.

In North America, the term loyalist characterised colonists who rejected the American Revolution in favour of remaining within the British Empire. American loyalists included royal officials, Anglican clergymen, wealthy merchants with ties to London, demobilised British soldiers, and recent arrivals (especially from Scotland), as well as many ordinary colonists who were conservative by nature and/or felt that the protection of Britain was needed. Colonists with loyalist sympathies accounted for an estimated 15% to 20% of the white colonial population of the day, compared with those described as "Patriots", who accounted for about 40-50% of the population. This high level of political polarisation leads historians to argue that the American Revolution was as much a civil war as it was a war of independence from the British Crown.

Victorian Times London. Victoria was born May 24, 1819, Kensington Palace, London, United Kingdom, and was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death, January 22, 1901,