[As Mr. Greville's pamphlet on the Precedency Question is now rarely to be met with, it may be convenient to reprint it in this place. It is a tract of considerable originality and research, and it was carefully revised and approved by Lord Wensleydale and some of the most eminent lawyers of the time when it was written. This essay has therefore a substantial legal and historical value. Moreover, its application is not exclusively retrospective or confined to the peculiar case of the precedency of the late Prince Consort at the time of his marriage, which gave rise to warm debates, for it deals with the precedency of the members of the Royal Family, not being sons or daughters of a sovereign, or standing in close propinquity to the throne. In the course of years these personages have become numerous, and for the first time in our history (at least since the reign of James I.), between twenty and thirty grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the reigning sovereign are in existence, whose claims to precedency will have to be considered. By the 31st Henry VIII., which assigns places in Parliament and Council to the sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews of the king, 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. The mere fact of their descent, in a more remote degree, from the sovereign, gives them in law no precedency at all, although it may be conceded to them by custom, and the respect willingly paid to members of the Royal Family. Nor are they entitled to bear the title of " Royal Highness " unless it be conferred upon them by the Crown. Thus, if I am not mistaken, the late Duke of Gloucester, who was a nephew of George III., was not a " Royal Highness " until he married the Princess Mary, the king's daughter, when that distinction was conferred upon him. In two or three generations from the present time it is not improbable that the descendants of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert will exceed a hundred persons, and, although they will doubtless all look back with pride to their illustrious ancestry, they will have no rank or precedency, in the strict sense of the term, except such as may be conferred upon them personally by the Crown. For these reasons, it appears to me that Mr. Greville's remarks on the subject may have some future interest.—Henry Reeve]
In the House of Lords on Tuesday, 4th February [1840], when Prince Albert's Naturalization Bill was under discussion, Lord Brougham said—
" That these questions of precedence were of a very difficult and doubtful nature. It was therefore a great convenience to submit them to the House, because it enabled Parliament to make that quite certain which, if dealt with under the common law of the country, might be open to objection."
The interest which has been excited by this question, and the doubts which prevail, even among the learned in the law, as to the actual extent of the Royal prerogative in the matter of granting precedence, are sufficient to provoke an inquiry into the opinions of writers upon constitutional law, an examination of the ancient practice, and of some of the cases which seem to bear immediately upon the point, in order, if possible, to arrive at something like a reasonable conclusion as to the power actually possessed by the Crown, and the manner in which, and extent to which, it might be just and expedient to exercise it upon the present occasion.
The first question which presents itself is, What have been the ancient prerogatives of the Crown in granting dignities or pre-eminencies of any description; and, secondly, In what respect, if at all, these prerogatives have been limited or restrained by any Parliamentary enactment. By the laws of England, the Sovereign is considered the fountain of honor and of privilege, and the constitution has intrusted to him the sole power of conferring dignities and honors, in confidence that he will bestow them on none but such as deserve them. [Blackstone, vol. i, p. 271.]
The King may create new titles, and has the prerogative of conferring privileges upon private persons,[Ibid, i, 272, 4th Inst., 361] such as granting place or precedence to any of his subjects. He may make an Arch-duke, who would not, however, take place of any duke his ancient. [4th Inst., 363.]
The King could create a peer, and give him precedence over all other peers of the same rank, [Ibid.] a prerogative which was not unfrequently exercised in ancient times. Henry VI. created Henry Beauchamp Earl of Warwick and Praecomes totius Angliae, and afterward Duke of Warwick, with a right to sit in Parliament after the Duke of Norfolk, but before the Duke of Buckingham ; the same King created Edmund of Hadham Earl of Richmond, and gave him precedence over all other earls, and Jasper of Hatfield Earl of Pembroke with precedence next to the said Earl of Richmond. [4th Inst., 361.] There appears to have been no limit to the authority of the Crown in granting honors, titles, dignities, and offices, excepting only that it could not grant new offices with fees annexed, because that would be a tax upon the subject, which can only be imposed by Act of Parliament. Assuming, then, that such was the extent of the prerogative previously to the 31st of Henry VIII., the next question is, Whether it was restrained by that statute ; and if it was, within what limits it was thenceforward confined ? The preamble asserts the prerogative of the Crown in the strongest terms ; probably for the express purpose of guarding against any inference that it was thereby abridged or restrained. It is difficult to believe that, in passing the Act entitled "for placing the Lords," Henry VIII. felt any doubt as to the possession, or scruple as to the exercise, of the prerogative of his progenitors and still less that he had the remotest idea of divesting himself of an iota of his own. The despotic temper of the King, the subservient character of his Parliaments, and his habitual employment of them as the most obsequious instrument of his will, make it probable that he adopted this, merely as the easiest and most convenient mode of settling a difficult and complex question but without the slightest misgiving as to his own power, or any notion of restraining himself from granting any privilege or precedence it might at any subsequent period be his pleasure to bestow. The circumstances under which the provisions of this Act were carried into operation were remarkable, and give it much more the appearance of a decree of the King, or a resolution of the Lords, than of an Act of the Three Estates. The assent of the Commons seems to have been assumed as a matter of course, and as soon as it had passed the Lords (which it did very hastily), it was immediately put in force, " Concerning the passing it, it is observable, that on Monday, 1st May, the Lord Chancellor quandam introduxit billam concernentem assignationem locorum, etc., which was that day read twice ; the next day it had a third reading, and on Friday a fourth; on the morrow, the Lord Cromwell is placed before the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others are placed according to the Act, being before placed without regard to their offices, but it was not returned from the House of Commons with their assent till the Monday following." [Selden, "Titles of Honor," p. 117.]The preamble of the Act is in the following terms:
"For in as much as in all great councils, or congregations of men, having sundry degrees and offices in the commonwealth, it is very requisite and convenient that an order should be had and taken for the sitting of such persons, that they knowing their places may use the same without displeasure, or let of the council, therefore the King's Most Royal Majesty, tho' it apper-taineth unto his prerogative Royal, to give such honour, reputation, and placing to his counsellors, and other his subjects as shall be seeming to his most excellent wisdom, is, nevertheless, pleased and contented for an order to be had and taken in this his Most High Court of Parliament, that it shall be enacted by the authority of the same in manner and form as hereafter followeth :"
Then come nine sections settling the places in which the Royal Family, great officers of state, and others, are to sit in the Parliament Chamber, and the tenth section enacts that, " as well in all Parliaments as in the Star Chamber, and in all other assemblies and conferences of council, the Chancellor, Lord President, Privy Seal (that is the Chancellor, President, and Privy Seal, above all dukes, not being the king's sons, etc., and the Great Chamberlain, Marshal, Lord Steward, Chamberlain, and Chief Secretary, being a Baron above all others of the same degree), shall sit and be placed in such order and fashion as is above rehearsed, and not in other place by authority of this present Act."
There exists what may be deemed very fair evidence to show that in those days the Royal prerogative as to precedence was never supposed to be abridged by this Act, but on the contrary that it still continued to flourish in undiminished force. Only two months afterward Henry was divorced from Anne of Cloves, when, as is well known, he bribed her into compliance with his wishes by a liberal grant of money and of honors. By his letters patent he declared her his adopted sister, and gave her precedence before all the ladies in England, next his queen and daughters, and therefore before his nieces [The Duchess of Suffolk, and the Countess of Cumberland, daughter of Charles Brandon and Mary, Queen Dowager of France.] and their children, who were directly in the succession to the crown.[Burnet, "Hist. Ref."'vol. i, p. 565.] On the 3d November, 1547, Edward VI. granted to his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, immediately after his victory in Scotland, letters patent of precedence, in the following terms:
"As our most dear uncle Edward, Duke of Somerset, by the advice of the Lords, we have named ... to be governor of our person and protector of our realm . . . during our minority, hath no such place appropriated and appointed to him in our High Court of Parliament, as is convenient and necessary, as well as in proximity of blood unto us, being our uncle ... as well as for the better maintaining and conducting of our affairs. We have, therefore, as well by the consent of our said uncle, as by the advice of other the Lords and the rest of the Privy Council, willed, ordained, and appointed, that our said uncle shall sit alone, and be placed at all times ... in our said Court of Parliament, upon the bench or stole standing next our seat royal, in our Parliament Chamber. . . . And further, that he do enjoy all such other privileges, pre-eminences, etc etc. The statute concerning the placing of the Lords in the Parliament Chamber and other assemblies of council, made in the thirty-first year of our most dear father, of famous memory, King Henry VIII.; notwithstanding." [Rymer 15.—Collins's Peerage.]
This instrument must, under the circumstances, be taken as the act of Somerset himself; and it is inconceivable that he should have had the audacity to attempt in his own behalf, that for which the plenitude of Henry VIII.'s power had been deemed insufficient, or to have perpetrated in the name of a minor king, a direct and useless violation of a recent statute —more especially when the same object might have been as easily accomplished by the authority of Parliament, where the Protector's popularity would have insured a ready compliance with his wishes. This view of the case receives confirmation from the total absence of any allusion to this grant in the charges which were soon afterward urged against him—everything that malice could devise was raked together for the purpose of swelling the articles of impeachment; but neither when he was degraded from the Protectorate, nor afterward when he was deprived of life, was any accusation brought against him, tending to show that these letters patent were considered illegal or unconstitutional. Nearly a century later, Lord Coke lays it down that no Act of Parliament can bind the king from any prerogative which is inseparable from his person, " but that" (Mr. Hallam adds) " was before he had learned the bolder tone of his declining years." [Const. Hist." vol. iii, p. 84.]
The order of Baronets was a new creation by James I., but his decision of the controversy which arose touching a point of precedency thereupon, shows the prevailing notions of the royal prerogative.
"The King's most excellent Majesty, having taken into his royal audience and censure a certain controversy, touching place and precedence, between the younger sons of viscounts and barons, and the baronets, being a degree by His Majesty recently created, which controversy did arise out of some dark words contained in the letters patent of the said baronets. His Majesty well weighing that the letters patent of the Baronets have no special clause or express words to give them the said precedence, and being a witness unto himself, which is a testimony above all exception, that his princely meaning was only to give and advance the new dignity of His Majesty's creation, but never therewithal tacitly and obscurely to injure a third party."[Titles of Honor, p. 119.]... And then he goes on to give precedency to Knights of the Garter, Privy Councilors, Judges, &c.; over the younger sons of Viscounts and Barons, " in all places, and upon all occasions, any constitution order, degree, office, service, place, employment, custom, use, or other thing to the contrary notwithstanding." From Henry VIII. to James I. were the high and palmy days of prerogative, when the authority of the Crown was something even more transcendental than that of Parliament itself, and when it was no doubt held that, while the Crown could dispense with the provisions of an Act of Parliament, an Act of Parliament could never bind the prerogative of the Crown; but when Lord Coke began to adopt his " bolder tone " he laid down very different law, and he says expressly, in speaking of the Act of Henry VIII., "But Henry, though standing as much upon his prerogative, as any of his progenitors, finding how vexatious it was to himself, and distasteful to his ancient nobility, to have new raised degrees, raised to precedency of them, and finding that this kind of controversy for precedency was of that nature, that it had many partakers, spent long time, and hindered the arduous, urgent, and weighty affairs of the Parliament, was content to bind and limit his prerogative by Act of Parliament, concerning the precedency of his great officers, and his nobility." [4th Inst., 362.]
Whatever may have been the constitutional notions of the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, there can be no doubt that the lawyers of the nineteenth would hold, according to Lord Coke's latter dictum, that the prerogative of the Crown is limited and restrained by the 31st Henry VIII., and it is only worth while to ascertain what it previously was, in so far as such an inquiry can assist in the solution of the present question; for the same lawyers would probably be unanimous in declaring that, except so far as it was expressly limited and restrained by that statute, the prerogative still remains undiminished and in all its pristine vigor—that Queen Victoria possesses all the power which Henry VIII. enjoyed, saving that of which he was specifically divested by this Act.
The Act "for placing the Lords " restrains the Queen from granting any precedence in Parliament or in the Council, over any of the Royal and official personages and others, who have places assigned to them therein. She may make any man a Privy Councilor, but she can not authorize him to sit in a higher place than that to which he is by law entitled, or above those whose places are marked out by the statute. If Prince Albert, for example, was to be made a Privy Councilor, not being a peer, he would, of absolute right, be entitled to no place but that of a junior Privy Councilor, or to such as a Knight of the Garter might claim; and all the persons specified in the Act would have an absolute rigid to take precedence of him in Council. And it is worth while to consider in what a curious predicament he might have been placed, if the Bill for his naturalization had passed with those amendments as to his precedence which are said to have been contemplated by the Opposition Lords—that is, supposing always the rule of precedence established by law to be carried inflexibly into operation.
If the status of Prince Albert had been fixed immediately after all the members of the Royal Family, and immediately before the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if Her Majesty should be hereafter pleased to make both Prince George of Cambridge and Prince Albert members of her Most Honorable Privy Council, in what order of precedence would these princes bo obliged to take their respective scats at the board ? In order clearly to comprehend this point, it is necessary to explain the ancient usage as to Royal precedence, and the manner in which it has been affected by the 31st Henry VIII. The Royal Family are to be considered in two lights, according to the different senses in which the term Royal Family is used—the larger sense includes all who may possibly inherit the Crown; the confined sense, those within a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning Prince, and to whom the law pays an extraordinary respect; but, after that degree is past, they fall into the rank of ordinary subject. The younger sons of the king, and other branches of the Royal Family, not in the immediate line
of succession, were only so far regarded by the ancient law as to give them a certain degree of precedence over peers and other officers, ecclesiastical and temporal. This was done by the 31st of Henry VIII., which assigns places in the Parliament Chamber and Council to the king's sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews, etc.—" 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 complain that, by the creation of Prince Rupert to be Duke of Cumberland, and of the Earl of Lennox to be duke of that name, previous to the creation of James to bo Duke of York, it might happen that their grandsons would have precedence of the grandsons of the Duke of York." [Blackstone, vol. i, p. 226.]
Prince George of Cambridge, then, being neither son, brother, uncle, or nephew to the Queen, and having no personal dignity, is not entitled to any precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the great officers of state; the 31st Henry VIII. would place him below them all; but the 3d Victoria (supposing such an Act to have passed) would have placed Prince Albert below Prince George, but above the Archbishop, who is himself above Prince George, thus giving to the Master of the Ceremonies the solution of a somewhat difficult problem of precedence—namely, how to place A above B, B above C, and C above A. This reductio ad absurdum at least proves that the amended Act would not only not have settled the question of precedence satisfactorily, but would not have settled it at all.
It may seem surprising or paradoxical to assert, and many may with difficulty believe, that Prince George of Cambridge is entitled to no precedence of his own, inseparable from his royal birth, but such, nevertheless, is undoubtedly the fact. By law, he can only take royal rank as the son, brother, uncle, or nephew, of the reigning sovereign, none of which he is, and he derives none whatever from having been nephew of William IV. and George IV., and grandson of George III. The princes of the Blood Royal have, as to precedence, a movable and not a fixed status, constantly shifting, with their greater or less propinquity to the actual sovereign; and in the event of Prince George's succession to his father's dukedom, he would only be entitled to a place in Parliament and in the Council, according to the ancienty of his peerage.
The practice, however, does not wait upon the right, and is regulated by the universal sense and feeling of the respect and deference which is due to the Blood Royal of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury does not take a legal opinion or pore over the 31st of Henry VIII. to discover whether he has a right to jostle for that precedence with the cousin, which he knows he is bound to concede to the uncle, of the Queen; but he yields it as a matter of course, and so uniform and unquestionable is the custom, that in all probability neither the Prince nor the Prelate is conscious that it is in the slightest degree at variance with the right.
The obscurity which involves
the question of precedence, and the prevailing doubts as to the extent
of the Royal prerogative, proceed, in a great measure, from the
intermixture of law and custom, by which the practice is regulated and
enforced. The table of precedence, the authority of which is recognized
for all social and ceremonial purposes, rests upon statutory
enactments, ancient usages, and the king's letters patent; usage
creeping in to disarrange the order, and break the links of the chain
forged by the law; for, while the 31st of Henry VIII. places earls
after marquises, custom interposes and postpones the former to the
eldest sons of dukes (and so of Marquis's eldest sons and viscounts),
though these are only commoners in the eye of the law. Now, as no
custom (unless expressly saved) can prevail against the force of a
statute, this renders it still more clear, that nothing was intended by
the 31st Henry VIII. but "the placing the Lords" in Parliament,[Lord
Herbert, in his Life of Henry VIII., says, in allusion to this statute,
" it was declared also how the Lords in Parliament should be placed,"
p. 218.] and
that the question of general precedence (with all the prerogatives of
the Crown thereunto appertaining) was left untouched by it.
[Lord Coke
clearly distinguishes between precedence in Parliament and Council and
general precedence:—Thus far for avoiding contention about precedency
in Parliament, Star Chamber, and all other assemblies, Council, etc.
Now, they that desire to know the places and precedency of the nobility
and subjects of the realm, as well men as women, and of their children
(which we have added the rather, for that the contention about
precedency between persons of that sex is even fiery, furious, and
sometime fatal), we will refer you to a record of great authority in
the reign of Henry VII., entitled," etc.—4th Inst., 363.]
In point of fact, the royal prerogative always has been, and still
continually is exercised, in violation of the order of the established
table; for when the King, by his Royal warrant, gives to one of his
subjects, having neither rank nor dignity, the place and precedence of
a duke's or an earl's son, the individual thus elevated supersedes all
those (below that rank) whose place and precedence is determined either
by law or custom.
The result, then, appears to be that, in the olden time, the king had unlimited power in matters of honor and precedence, and could confer whatever dignity or pre-eminence he thought fit, upon any of his subjects. That this power has been expressly restrained, quoad the Parliament Chamber and the Council, but exists unfettered in all other respects.
In Parliament (should Prince Albert be created a peer), he would only be entitled to a seat at the bottom of the degree to which he might belong, and he would be expressly prohibited from sitting nearer to the throne. In the Privy Council likewise (if made a Privy Councilor) he would be entitled to no especial place, but everywhere else, at ceremonials of every description, at royal marriages, christenings or funerals, at banquets, processions, and courtly receptions, at installations and investitures, at all religious, civil, or military celebrations, upon all occasions, formal or social, public or private, the Queen may grant to her husband an indisputable precedence and pre-eminence over every other subject in the realm. It will probably be less difficult to obtain a concurrence of opinion as to the extent of the Queen's constitutional right in granting precedence, than as to the manner in which it would be morally fit, and just to others, that this right should be exercised.
The bill, as originally introduced in the House of Lords, was undoubtedly liable to serious objections; but it is difficult to discover any valid reason why the Prince, Consort to the Queen, should not be invested for his own life with the highest personal dignity which it is in the power of the Crown to confer.
It has been said, that to place Prince Albert before the princes of the blood royal would be an invasion of the birth right of these illustrious persons. This seems to be the result of a confused notion, that a privilege of precedence is identified with a beneficial interest—it may be a man's birthright to succeed in some contingency to the throne, or to a title or to an estate, and it would be injurious, and therefore unjust, to thrust any interloper between him and his chance, however remote it might be, of such succession. But the same Act which limits the prerogative of the Crown, confers on the Royal Dukes and Great Officers of State the only right of precedence which they possess, and while they can claim no more than was given to them, the Crown is as surely entitled to all that was left to it by that Act. No individual can insist upon an indefeasible right never to be preceded, under any circumstances, by any other individual not having a status defined by this Act, and as the uncles of the Queen, and the hereditary Earl Marshal of England, occupy their respective steps in the ladder of precedence by the self-same title, there would be no greater violation of birth-right in placing an individual without a status before the Duke of Sussex than there would in placing him before the Duke of Norfolk; if there be any injustice at all, the difference would not be in the principle, but in its local or personal application.
The question, then, is one of expediency, and of propriety, to be determined with reference to its own special circumstances, and according to the analogies which can be brought to bear upon it; there is not only no case exactly in point to refer to, but there is none sufficiently analogous to be taken as a precedent. When Queen Anne came to the throne, Prince George of Denmark was the only prince in England (all his children being dead), and no new Act was necessary to give him precedence, if the Queen had desired it, inasmuch as there was nobody for him to precede. The condition of a Queen Consort is certainly very different from that of a Prince Consort; but, upon the broad principle of moral fitness, there seems no reason why the husband of the Queen regnant should not be invested, by virtue of his consortium, with the highest dignity, over other men, just as the wife of the king is participant by virtue of her marriage of divers prerogatives over other women. For the prerogatives with which the law invests her are allotted to her not upon her own account, but upon that of the king; she is considered as a feme sole, and has certain capacities and rights, " in order that the king, whose continual care and study is for the public, should not. be troubled and disquieted on account of his wife's domestic affairs." And the law, which out of respect to the king makes it high treason to compass or imagine the death of his wife, when she becomes a widow ceases to surround her with this protection. It is the king alone, his dignity and his comfort, which the law regards, and the privileges and pre-eminences of his family are conferred or established in such modes and proportions as may be most conducive thereto.
The principle on which precedence is established is that of propinquity to the soverign, and no propinquity can be so close as that of the husband to the wife, nor does it seem unreasonable that all other subjects should be required to yield the outward forms of honor and respect to the man who is elevated to a station so far above them, whom she is herself bound to " love, honor, serve, and obey," and who is superior to her in their natural while still subordinate in their civil and political relations. Many people who are not unwilling to concede a high degree of precedence to the Prince, are very sensitive about the dignity of the heir-apparent, and, while they are content that he should precede his other children, would on no account allow him to be superior in rank to a Prince of Wales. The difficulty in these cases is to establish a principle; but that difficulty is rendered much greater if, when the principle is once admitted, it is not taken with all its legitimate and necessary consequences. If the Prince is entitled to claim precedency over any of the blood-royal of England, above all others, he may claim it upon every moral ground over his own children, nor is there any civil or political consideration in reference to the heir-apparent, requiring that an exception should be made in his behalf. There seem to exist confused notions of something very extraordinary and transcendent in the status of a Prince of Wales, but the difference between him and his younger brother is not very great; and the only positive privilege with which the law certainly and exclusively invests the heir-apparent is that of making it high treason to attempt his life. [It is also treason to kill certain judicial officers when in actual execution of their offices.—Hale, P. C. 13.]<
The heir-apparent is Prince of
Wales, and Duke of Cornwall, but he 18 not necessarily either the one
or the other, and except on a certain condition he cannot be the
latter.[Two months
elapsed between the death of Frederick Prince of Wales and the creation
of his son, George III., Prince of Wales.] For as the king creates his
elder son, or heir-apparent Prince of Wales, he has the power of
withholding such creation, and though the eldest son of the king is
Duke of Cornwall by inheritance, the dukedom is limited to the
first-begotten son of the king.
[If, for
example, George IV. had died in his youth, his next brother might have
been heir-apparent, with no other title than that of Bishop of
Osnaburgh. Henry VIII. after the death of Prince Arthur, and Charles I.
after that of Prince Henry, were Dukes of Cornwall, but by special, new
creation. H., P. C. 13.]
The Prince of Wales has no right or privilege beyond those of any other subject; he owes the same faith and allegiance to the sovereign; and since 1789 none have ever ventured to assert that he could claim the regency rather than any other subject. His political condition, therefore, is little if at all different from that of the rest of the Royal Family. His personal propinquity to the sovereign must be less than that of his father, and the question is, whether there is anything so peculiar in his status as to supersede those natural relations of father and son, which, according to all human custom, as well as divine injunction, involve the duty of honor from the latter to the former.
The son's enfranchisement from parental rule when he arrives at years of discretion does not exempt him from the honor he is bound by the law of God and nature to pay to his parents. [Locke, vol. iv, p. 347.] The son is under a perpetual obligation to honor his father by all outward expressions, and from this obligation no state can absolve him. "The honor due to parents" (says Locke) " a monarch on his throne owes his mother, and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her government." [Locke, vol. iv, p. 376.] The monarchical theory ascribes to the King of England two bodies or capacities, a natural body, and a politic or mystical body, and " from this mystical union of the ideal with the real king, the inquirer after constitutional information is led through childish reasoning and unintelligible jargon, to practical consequences founded on expediency." [Allen on the Royal Prerogative, p. 29.] These practical consequences are the complete subordination of the natural to the politic capacity of the sovereign, and that moral revolution which supersedes the duty of the son to the father by the superior duty of the subject to the sovereign. Nothing less transcendental seems sufficient to cancel the force of this natural obligation, and, while father and son are both in the condition of subjects, the filial and parental relations need not be outwardly reversed.
If the Queen, therefore, should be advised to grant to her Royal Consort letters patent of precedence immediately next to her own person, and at the same time make him a Privy Councilor, there would be no practical difficulty with regard to his place at the Council Board, notwithstanding the legal exception ; there custom has in a great measure superseded law. The occasions are very rare when any of the Royal Dukes are present; and upon all others the Prince would sit upon the right hand of Her Majesty, and precedence would be conceded to him as a matter of course. The Council Board is no longer what it was in the days of Henry VIII., at which time the King sat there regularly in person. The greater part of the Privy Councilors were in constant attendance upon him. [Sir H. Nicholas's Preface to Council Register, vol. i, p. 13.] They resided in the Court, and accompanied him wherever he went; much (though far from all) of the most important business of the State was transacted there, and the order of sitting, when the members had to deliver their opinions seriatim, beginning with the lowest, was not unimportant. Councils are now merely formal assemblies, for the expedition of certain orders, which must emanate from the sovereign in person.
When any of the Royal Dukes are present, they sit next the Queen on her right hand, the Lord President always next her on her left. And, although the Lord President and the Chancellor (when present) sit on either side of the Queen, all the other officers are indiscriminately placed.' It would not probably be deemed advisable to go back to the end of the seventeenth century "for a precedent, or it would be found that Prince George of Denmark sat in council, without taking any oaths; not, therefore, as a Privy Councilor, but pro honoris causâ. He always, however, occupied the place of honor, and his attendance was very regular, though there is no record of his having ever taken the oaths ; and, at the accession of King William, when all the other Privy Councilors were sworn, it is expressly stated that Prince George was not.[He was first brought into Council by James II. in person, and placed on his right hand, but not sworn.]
It is much to be regretted that such heat and irritation have been manifested in the discussion of this question, and certainly between the proceedings in both Houses of Parliament. Prince Albert may well have thought his reception neither cordial nor flattering; but the truth is, that any mortification which either the Prince or the Queen may have felt (and in her it is only natural, whether just or not) is at least as attributable to the really objectionable nature of the propositions which were made as to the opposition which they encountered.
Nothing herein is more to be deplored than that any mistaken zeal should misrepresent the conduct, or any hasty impression misconstrue the motives, of the Duke of Wellington. His whole life has been a continual manifestation of loyalty and of superiority to petty purposes, and unworthy inducements ; but his notions of loyalty are of a nature which mere courtiers are unable to comprehend, because he always considers the honor and the interests of the Crown in preference to the personal inclination of the sovereign.
Of all men who ever lived he
has sought the least the popularity he has so largely acquired—the tide
of which, sometimes diverted by transient causes, has always returned
with accumulated force. With him it is no " echo of folly, and shadow
of renown," but a deep, affecting, almost sublime national feeling,
which exults in him as the living representative of national glory. If
there be an exception in any place to this universal sentiment, let us
hope that the impression will not endure, that the cloud of momentary
error will be dispersed, and that justice, ample and not tardy, will be
rendered to
" The noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of time,"