Key terms & definitions

Royal officials responsible for organising recruitment and inspecting potential soldiers and their equipment.

Dedication to someone or something, involving a willingness to fulfil responsibilities over time.

The final act of farewell to the deceased at the graveside or crematorium.

The stage at which a bill is examined line by line and amendments are considered.

The process of turning something, such as a celebrity identity or fan experience, into a product or opportunity for commercial profit.

A product bought and sold in trade, such as tobacco.

A raw material or agricultural product bought and sold, such as gold.

Something that can be bought, sold or used as an economic resource.

A raw material traded in large quantities, such as crude oil, whose market price can change with supply and demand.

The market price of a widely traded raw material, such as wood pulp, which can change as supply and demand change.

The economic worth of a raw material or product that can be bought and sold, such as timber.

An ancestral organism from which two or more groups of organisms evolved.

An ancestral organism or population from which two or more groups evolved.

An earlier population from which two or more later groups of organisms evolved.

A denominator shared by two or more fractions so that they can be added or subtracted.

The fixed amount added to one term of an arithmetic progression to obtain the next; it can be positive, negative or zero.

A factor of each of two or more numbers.

The good of the whole community, including conditions that allow everyone to live with dignity.

Land over which villagers had shared rights, such as grazing animals and collecting fuel.

Law developed through judges’ decisions in court cases, rather than made through legislation.

An arrangement through which member countries reduce barriers to trade and enable closer economic cooperation.

A depression or anxiety-related condition that causes emotional distress and interferes with daily functioning.

A rhythm used in many hymns, alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter: lines with four and three pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables.

A multiple of each of two or more numbers.

The idea that a policy should benefit the kingdom as a whole. The Crown and Flemish weavers used this argument to defend privileges for immigrant cloth workers.

The fixed multiplier between consecutive terms of a geometric progression, found by dividing a term by the preceding non-zero term.

One unit used for every quantity being compared, such as grams for both masses.

The shared welfare or good of a community. The narrator’s phrase “commonweal of mankind” extends this idea to humanity as a whole.

The republican government established after Charles I’s execution; the term also helps describe the period of government without a monarch before the Restoration.

A voluntary association of 56 countries, most with historical links to the British Empire, which cooperate on matters such as development, trade, democracy and human rights.