[imagine the death of our lady the king's companion, as of the king himself: and to violate, or defile, the queen consort amounts to the same high crime; as well in the person committing the fact, as in the queen herself, if consenting. A law of Henry the eighth (c) made it treason also for any woman, who was not a virgin, to marry the king without informing him thereof: but this law was soon after repealed (d), it trespassing too strongly as well on natural justice, as female modesty. If, however, the queen be accused of any species of treason, she shall, (whether consort or dowager,) be tried by the peers of parliament, as Queen Anne Boleyn was in the twenty-eighth year of Henry the eighth. of The husband of a queen regnant, as Prince George of Denmark was to Queen Anne,] and as his royal highness Prince Albert, (under the title of the Prince Consort,) now is to her Majesty, [is her subject (e);] but in the case of the prince last mentioned, it is provided by 3 & 4 Vict. c. 52, that if there be issue of her Majesty, who at her demise shall become king or queen of this realm, his royal highness shall, until such issue attain the age eighteen, be the guardian of such issue, and shall be entitled in his or her name, and under the style of regent of the united kingdom, to exercise the royal power. The Act, however, restrains him from giving the royal assent to any bill for varying the course of succession to the crown, as established by 12 & 13 Will. III. c. 2, or for altering the Act of uniformity, 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 4, relative to the services and ceremonies of the Church of England, or the Act 5 Anne, c. 8, establishing the Church of Scotland. And it is further provided, that if, after becoming guardian and regent he (c) Stat. 33 Hen. 8, c. 21. (d) This was a clause in the Act which attainted Queen Catherine Howard, and her accomplices, for her incontinence; but it was not repealed till the 1 Edw. 6, c. 12, which abrogated all treasons created since the memorable statute in the twenty fifth year of Edward the third. (Christian's Blackstone.) (e) The Act of naturalization of his royal highness, 3 & 4 Vict. c. 2, required, in the usual form, that he should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. should profess, or marry a person who professes, the Popish religion, or should cease to reside in the united kingdom, all the authorities so vested in him shall determine. [A queen dowager is the widow of the king, and, as such, enjoys most of the privileges belonging to her as queen consort. But it is not high treason to conspire her death, or to violate her chastity, because the succession to the crown is not thereby endangered. Yet still, pro dignitate regali, no man can marry a queen dowager without special licence from the king, on pain of forfeiting his lands and goods. This, Sir Edward Coke (f) tells us, was enacted in parliament in the sixth year of Henry the sixth, though the statute be not in print (g). But she, though an alien born], is entitled by the common law [to dower after the king's demise], though the alien wife of a subject was not entitled (as we have seen) to dower, until the law in that respect was lately altered by act of parliament (h). A queen dowager, when married again to a subject, doth not lose her regal dignity, as peeresses dowager] when commoners by birth [do their peerage, when they marry commoners. For Catherine, queen dowager of Henry the fifth, though she married a private gentleman, Owen ap Meredith ap Theodore, commonly called Owen Tudor, yet, by the name of Catherine, queen of England, maintained an action against the Bishop of Carlisle. And so, the queen dowager of Navarre, marrying with Edmund Earl of Lancaster, brother to King Edward the first, maintained an action of dower (after the death of her second husband) by the name of Queen of Navarre (i). The Prince of Wales, or heir apparent to the crown, and also his royal consort, and the princess royal, or eldest daughter of the king, are likewise peculiarly regarded by (f) 2 Inst. 18; see Riley's Plac. Parl. 72. (g) Co. Litt. 31. Mr. Hargrave, in a note to Co. Litt. 133, says, that no such statute can be found. Lord Coke there refers to it by 8 Hen. 6, No. 7; in 2 Inst. 18, by 6 Hen. 6, (h) Vide sup. p. 416. [the laws. For, by statute 25 Edw. III., to compass or conspire the death of the former, or to violate the chastity of either of the latter, are as much high treason as to conspire the death of the king, or violate the chastity of the queen. And this because the Prince of Wales is next in succession to the crown, and to violate his wife might taint the blood royal with bastardy: and the eldest daughter of the king is also inheritable as sole heir (k) to the crown, on failure of issue male, and therefore more respected by the laws than any of her younger sisters (1); insomuch that upon this, united with other (feudal) principles, while our military tenures were in force, the king might levy an aid for marrying his eldest daughter, and her only. The heir apparent to the crown is usually made Prince of Wales (m) and Earl of Chester, by special creation and investiture (n); but, being the sovereign's eldest son, he is by inheritance, Duke of Cornwall (during the life of the sovereign), without any new creation (o). The rest of the royal family may be considered in two different lights, according to the different senses in which the term royal family is used. The larger sense includes all those who are by any possibility inheritable to the crown. Such, before the Revolution, were all the de (k) The expression of Blackstone is, that she is "alone inheritable," &c., which, as remarked by Mr. Justice Coleridge, does not clearly convey the meaning. (1) This statute perhaps was not meant to be extended to the princess royal when she had younger brothers living; for the issue of their wives must inherit the crown before the issue of the princess royal; yet their chastity is not protected by the statute. (Christian's Blackstone.) (m) This creation has not been confined to the heir apparent; for both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were created by their father Henry the eighth, Princesses of Wales, each of them at the time, (the latter after the illegitimation of Mary), being heir presumptive to the crown. 4 Hume, 113. (n) That is by letters-patent under the great seal of England. (Christian's Blackstone.) (o) The Prince's case, 8 Rep. 1; Seld. Tit. of Hon. 2, 5; vide Simpson v. Clayton, 4 Bing. N. C. 758; and Clayton v. Lord Grey, 1 Arnold, 312, n. (c). By 5 & 6 Vict. c. 2, and 7 & 8 Vict. c. 65, the council of the Prince of Wales are enabled to lease, sell and exchange lands, parcel of his duchy of Cornwall. [scendants of William the Conqueror, who had branched into an amazing extent, by intermarriages with the antient nobility. Since the Revolution and Act of Settlement, it means the Protestant issue of the Princess Sophia; now comparatively few in number, but which, in process of time, may possibly be as largely diffused. The more confined sense includes only those, who are within a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning prince, and to whom, therefore, the law pays an extraordinary regard and respect: but after that degree is past, they fall into the rank of ordinary subjects, and are seldom considered any farther, unless called to the succession upon failure of the nearer lines. For though collateral consanguinity is regarded indefinitely, with respect to inheritance or succession, yet it is and can only be regarded within some certain limits, in any other respect, by the natural constitution of things and the dictates of positive law (p). The younger sons and daughters of the king, and other branches of the royal family, who are not in the immediate line of succession, were therefore little farther regarded by the antient law, than to give them, to a certain degree, precedence before all peers and public officers, as well ecclesiastical as temporal. This is done by the statute 31 Hen. VIII. c. 10, which enacts, that no person, except the king's children, shall presume to sit or have place at the side of the cloth of estate in the parliament chamber; and that certain great officers therein named shall have precedence above all dukes, except only such as shall happen to be the king's son, brother, uncle, nephew, (which Sir Edward Coke (q) explains to signify grandson or nepos), or brother's or sister's son. Therefore, after these degrees are past, peers or others of the blood royal are entitled to no place or precedence, except what belongs to them by their personal rank or dignity: which made Sir Edward Walker (p) See Essay on Collateral Consanguinity, in Law Tracts, 4to. Oxon, 1771. [complain (r), that by the hasty creation of Prince Rupert to be Duke of Cumberland, and of the Earl of Lenox to be the duke of that name, previous to the creation of King Charles's second son, James, to be Duke of York, it might happen that their grandsons would have precedence of the grandsons of the Duke of York. Indeed under the description of the king's children his grandsons are held to be included, without having recourse to Sir Edward Coke's interpretation of nephew; and therefore when his late majesty King George the second created his grandson Edward, the second son of Frederick Prince of Wales, deceased, Duke of York, and referred it to the house of lords to settle his place and precedence, they certified (s) that he ought to have place next to the late Duke of Cumberland, the then king's youngest son; and that he might have a seat on the left hand of the cloth of estate. But when, on the accession of his late majesty George the third, those royal personages ceased to take place as the children, and ranked only as the brother and uncle, of the king, they also left their seats on the side of the cloth of estate: so that when the Duke of Gloucester, his majesty's second brother, took his seat in the house of peers (t), he was placed on the upper end of the earl's bench (on which the dukes usually sit), next to his royal highness the Duke of York.] In 1718, also, [upon a question referred to all the judges by King George the first, it was resolved, by the opinion of ten against the other two, that the education and care of all the king's grandchildren, while minors, did belong of right to his majesty, as king of this realm, even during their father's life (u). But they all agreed, that the care and (r) Tracts, p. 301. (s) Lords' Journ. 24th April, 1760. (t) Ibid. 10th Jan. 1765. (u) Fortesc. Al. 401-440. The authorities and arguments of the two dissenting judges, Price and Eyre, are so full and cogent that, if this question had arisen before the judges were independent of the crown, one would have been inclined to have suspected the sincerity of the other ten, and the authority of the decision. See Harg. St. Tr. vol. xi. 295. (Christian's Blackstone.) |