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or prorogation, it shall notwithstanding assemble immediately and that, if no parliament is then in being, the members of the last parliament shall assemble, and be again a parliament.

3. Lastly, a parliament may be dissolved or expire by length of time. So that, as our constitution now stands, the parliament must expire, or die a natural death, at the end of every seventh year ; if not sooner dissolved by the royal prerogative.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE KING AND HIS ROYAL FAMILY.

I, Of the King.

THE supreme executive power of these kingdoms is vested by our laws in a single person, the king or queen for it matters not to which sex the crown descends; but the person intitled to it, whether male or female, is immediately invested with all the ensigns, rights, and prerogatives of sovereign power; as is declared by statute 1 Mar. st. 3. c. 1.

In discoursing of the royal rights and authority, I shall consider the king under six distinct views : 1. With regard to his title. 2. His royal family. 3. His councils. 4. His duties. 5. His prerogative. 6. His revenue. And first with regard to

his title.

The grand fundamental maxim upon which the

jus coronæ, or right of succession to the throne of these kingdoms, depends, I take to be this: "that "the crown is, by common law and constitutional 66 custom, hereditary, but that the right of inheri"tance may from time to time be changed or li"mited by act of parliament; under which limita❝tions the crown still continues hereditary."

1. First, it is in general hereditary, or descendible to the next heir, on the death or demise of the last proprietor.

2. But, secondly, as to the particular mode of inheritance, it in general corresponds with the feodal path of descents, chalked out by the common law in the succession to landed estates; yet with one or two material exceptions. Like estates, the crown will descend lineally to the issue of the reigning monarch; as it did from king John to Richard II. through a regular pedigree of six lineal generations. As in common descents, the preference of males to females, and the rights of primogeniture among the males, are strictly adhered to. Like lands or tenements, the crown, on failure of the male line, descends to the issue female. But, among the females, the crown descends by right of primogeniture to the eldest daughter only and her issue; and not, as in common inheritances, to all the daughters at once; the evident necessity of a sole succession to the throne having occasioned the royal law of descents to depart from the common law in this respect: and therefore queen Mary on the death of her brother succeeded to the crown alone, and not in part

nership with her sister Elizabeth. Lastly, on failure of lineal descendants, the crown goes to the next collateral relations of the late king; provided they are lineally descended from the blood royal, that is, from that royal stock which originally acquired the crown.

3. The doctrine of hereditary right does by no means imply an indefeisible right to the throne. No man will, I think, assert this, that has considered our laws, constitution, and history, without prejudice, and with any degree of attention. It is unquestionably in the breast of the supreme legislative authority of this kingdom, the king and both houses of parliament, to defeat this hereditary right; and, by particular entails, limitations, and provisions, to exclude the immediate heir, and vest the inheritance in any one else.

4. But, fourthly; however the crown may be limited or transferred, it still retains its descendible quality, and becomes hereditary in the wearer of it. And hence in our law the king is said never to die, in his political body; though, in common with other men, he is subject to mortality in his natural capacity: because, immediately upon the natural death of Henry, William, or Edward, the king survives in his successor. For the right of the crown vests, eo instanti, upon his heir; either the haeres natus, if the course of descent remains unimpeached, or the haeres factus, if the inheritance be under any particular settlement. So that there can be no interregnum; but as sir Matthew Hale observes, the right of sovereignty is fully invested in the succes

sor by the very descent of the crown. And therefore, however acquired, it becomes in him absolutely hereditary, unless by the rules of the limitation it is otherwise ordered and determined.

In these four points consists the constitutional notion of hereditary right to the throne. And in the pursuit of this inquiry we shall find, that, from the days of Egbert, the first sole monarch of this kingdom, even to the present, the four cardinal maxims above mentioned have ever been held the constitutional canons of succession.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE KING'S ROYAL FAMILY.

THE first and most considerable branch of the king's royal family, regarded by the laws of England, is the queen.

The queen of England is either queen regent, queen consort, or queen dowager. The queen regent, regnant, or sovereign, is she who holds the crown in her own right. But the queen consort is the wife of the reigning king; and she, by virtue of her marriage, is participant of divers prerogatives above other women.

And, first, she is a public person, exempt and distinct from the king; and, not like other married women, so closely connected as to have lost all legal or separate existence so long as the marriage continues. For the queen is of ability to purchase

lands, and to convey them, to make leases, to grant copyholds, and do other acts of ownership, without the concurrence of her lord; which no other married woman can do. She is also capable of taking a grant from the king, which no other wife is from her husband. The queen of England hath separate courts and officers distinct from the king's, not only in matters of ceremony, but even of law; and her attorney and solicitor general are entitled to a place within the bar of his majesty's courts, together with the king's counsel. She may likewise sue and be sued alone, without joining her husband. She may also have a separate property in goods as well as lands, and has a right to dispose of them by will. In short, she is in all legal proceedings looked upon as a feme sole, and not as a married woman.

The queen hath also many exemptions, and minute prerogatives. For instance: she pays no toll; nor is she liable to any amercement in any court. But in general, unless where the law has expressly declared her exempted, she is upon the same footing with other subjects; being to all intents and purposes the king's subject, and not his equal.

The queen hath also some pecuniary advantages, which form her a distinct revenue:

But farther though the queen is in all respects a subject, yet, in point of the security of her life and person, she is put on the same footing with the king. It is equally treason (by the statute 25 Edw. III.) to compass or imagine the death of our lady the king's companion, as of the king himself: and to violate or defile the queen consort,

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