The King and the Constitutional Crisis of 1911
During the sultry summer of 1911, writes Frank Hardie, a conflict between Commons and Lords presented King George V with one of the most difficult problems of his reign.
The English summer of 1911 was most abnormally hot. On August 10th the temperature rose above 100 degrees fahrenheit. At Buckingham Palace late that night King George V, a methodical man, completed his diary for the day. (His entries in it ran, without a break, for fifty-six years).
‘At 11’, he wrote, ‘Bigge returned from the House of Lords with the good news that the Parliament Bill had passed. So the Halsburyites were, thank God, beaten. It is indeed a great relief to me, and I am spared any further humiliation by a creation of peers...’
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