thumb|A [[Crown (heraldry)|symbolic representation of the Crown, present on the symbols of many institutions in Commonwealth realms]]
The Crown is a political concept used in Commonwealth realms, analogous to the concept of the government in legal systems influenced by Roman civil law.
English common law never developed a concept of the state and left supreme executive power with the monarch. Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson theorised that the Crown is "an amorphous, abstract concept" and, thus, "impossible to define", while William Wade stated the Crown "means simply the Queen".
Warren J. Newman described the Crown as "a useful and convenient means of conveying, in a word, the compendious formal, executive and administrative powers and apparatus attendant upon the modern constitutional and monarchical state."
Lord Simon of Glaisdale stated:
Lord Diplock suggested the Crown means "the government [and] all of the ministers and parliamentary secretaries under whose direction the administrative work of the government is carried out by the civil servants employed in the various government departments."
In each Commonwealth realm, the term the Crown, at its broadest, means the government or the polity known as the state, while the sovereign in all realms is the living embodiment of the state, or symbolic personification of the Crown. The body of the reigning sovereign thus holds two distinct personas in constant coexistence, an ancient theory of the "King's two bodies"—the body natural (subject to infirmity and death) and the body politic (which never dies). The Crown and the sovereign are "conceptually divisible but legally indivisible [...] The office cannot exist without the office-holder". This theory is the basis of the immediate succession of the new British monarch upon the death of his or her predecessor; whilst the body natural may have passed, the body politic lives on.
The terms the Crown, the Crown in Right of [jurisdiction], His Majesty the King in Right of [jurisdiction], and similar, are all synonymous and the monarch's legal personality is sometimes referred to simply as the relevant jurisdiction's name. In countries using systems of government derived from Roman civil law, the state is the equivalent concept. However, the terms the sovereign or monarch and the Crown, though related, have different meanings: the Crown includes both the monarch and the government.
The Crown also represents the legal embodiment of executive, legislative, and judicial governance. While the Crown's legal personality is usually regarded as a corporation sole, it can, at least for some purposes, be described as a corporation aggregate headed by the monarch. Frederic William Maitland argued the Crown is a corporation aggregate embracing the government and the "whole political community". J.G. Allen preferred to view the Crown as a corporation sole; one office occupied by a single person, enduring "through generations of incumbents and, historically, lends coherence to a network of other institutions of a similar nature." Canadian academic Philippe Lagassé found the crown "acts in various capacities, as such: crown-in-council (executive); crown-in-parliament (legislative); crown-in-court (judicial). It is also an artificial person and office as a corporation sole. At its most basic, 'the Crown' is, in the UK and other Commonwealth realms, what in most other countries is 'the state'."
History
The concept of the Crown took form under the feudal system. Though not used this way in all countries that had this system, in England, all rights and privileges were ultimately bestowed by the ruler. Land, for instance, was granted by the Crown to lords in exchange for feudal services and they, in turn, granted the land to lesser lords. One exception to this was common socage: owners of land held as socage held it subject only to the crown. When such lands become ownerless, they are said to escheat; i.e. return to direct ownership of the Crown (Crown land). is the royal prerogative by which unowned property, primarily unclaimed inheritances, becomes the property of the Crown.
As such, the physical crown and the property belonging to successive monarchs in perpetuity came to be separated from the person of the monarch and his or her private property. After several centuries of the monarch personally exercising supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power, these functions decreased as parliaments, ministries, and courts grew through the 13th century. The term the Crown then developed into a means by which to differentiate the monarch's official functions from his personal choices and actions. Even within medieval England, there was the doctrine of capacities separating the person of the king from his actions in the capacity of monarch.
The Crown was first defined as an 'imperial' crown during the reign of Henry VIII in the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 which declared that 'this realm of England is an empire... governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same'. In William Blackstone's 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, he explained that "the meaning therefore of the legislature, when it uses these terms of empire and imperial, and applies them to the realm and crown of England, is only to assert that our king is equally sovereign and independent within these his dominions, as any emperor is in his empire; and owes no kind of subjection to any other potentate on earth."
When the Kingdom of England merged with those of Scotland and Ireland, the concept extended into the legal lexicons of the United Kingdom and its dependencies and overseas territories and, eventually, all of the independent Commonwealth realms.
Functions
Executive government
The institution and powers of the Crown are formally vested in the king, but, conventionally, its functions are exercised in the sovereign's name by ministers of the Crown