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[contracts, and sue and be sued without her husband; and in all legal proceedings she is looked upon as a feme sole, and not as a feme covert (g).

The queen consort hath also many exemptions and minute prerogatives; for instance, she pays no toll, and is not liable to amercement in any court (h). 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, in like manner as, in the imperial law, Augusta legibus soluta non est" (i).

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The original revenue of our queens consort, before and after the Conquest, consisted in certain rents exclusively appropriated to her majesty out of the demesne lands of the Crown; and it was frequent in Domesday Book, after specifying the rent due to the Crown, to add likewise the quantity of gold or other renders reserved to the queen (k). And sometimes the particular purpose of the appropriated revenue was specified, as, e.g., to buy wool for her majesty's use, to purchase oil for her lamps, or to furnish. her attire from head to foot (1). For a further addition to her income, moreover, the duty of queen-gold (aurum regina) was originally granted, those matters of grace and favour, out of which it arose, being frequently obtained from the Crown by the powerful intercession of the queen. For queen-gold was due on every voluntary offering or fine to the king amounting to ten marks and upwards, in consideration of any privileges, grants, licences, pardons, or other matters of royal favour, in the proportion of onetenth of such offering or fine (m); but it was not payable in respect of any aid or subsidy granted by parliament or convocation, nor on fines imposed by courts on offenders,

(g) Finch, L. 86; Co. Litt. 133 a. ; and cf. the Acts quoted in note (d), p. 458.

(h) Co. Litt. 133 b.; Finch, L. 185.

(i) Dig. i. 3, 31.

(k) Pryn. Aur. Reg., Append.

2, 3.

() Mag. Rot. Pip. 2 Hen. 2; Madox, Hist. Exch. 419. (m) Pryn. Aur. Reg. 2.

[nor on any voluntary present to the king without consideration moving from him to the subject, nor on any sale or contract whereby the revenues or possessions of the Crown were granted away or diminished (n).

There are traces of the payment of queen-gold in Domesday Book, and in the great pipe-roll of Henry the First (o); it forms a distinct head in the antient Dialogue of the Exchequer (p), written about 1178, and now attributed to Richard FitzNeal, who was treasurer to Henry the Second in 1158, and subsequently Bishop of London (9); and from that time downwards it was regularly claimed and enjoyed by all the queens consort of England till the death of Henry the Eighth. But, after the accession of the Tudor family, the collecting of it was much neglected; and, there having been no queen consort afterwards till the accession of James the First, a period of nearly sixty years, the very nature and quantity of queen-gold became then a matter of doubt. And when the question was referred by that king to the chief justices and chief baron, their report of it was so very unfavourable, that his consort Queen Anne, though she claimed it, yet never thought proper to exact it. In the earlier part of the reign of Charles the First, a writ for levying it was issued, at the suit of Queen Henrietta Maria (r); but the proceedings under that writ were lukewarm and ineffective, and at the Restoration, in 1660, it became, in effect, extinct.

Another antient perquisite belonging to the queen consort, mentioned by all our old writers (s), and for that reason only worthy of notice, is this, namely:-that on the taking of a whale on the coasts, which is a royal fish,

(n) 12 Rep. 21; 4 Inst. 358; Pryn. 6; Madox, Hist. Exch.

242.

(0) Madox, Disceptat. Epistol. 74; Pryn. Aur. Reg. App. 5. (p) Lib. 2, ch. 26.

(7) Pollock and Maitland, History of Eng. Law (2nd ed.), vol. i. p. 161.

() 19 Rym. Fod. 721.

(8) Bracton, 1. 3. ch. 3; Britton, ch. 17; Flet. 1. 1, cc. 45, 46.

[it shall be divided between the king and the queen, the head only being the king's property, and the tail of it the queen's.

But though the queen consort is in all respects a subject, yet in respect of the security of her life and person she is put on the same footing with the king. Thus it is equally treason under the Statute of Treasons, 1351, to compass or imagine the death of our lady the king's companion, as of the king himself; and to violate the queen consort amounts to the same high crime, as well in the person committing the fact, as in the queen herself, if consenting. And if the queen, whether consort or dowager, be accused of any species of treason, she must be tried by the peers of parliament; as Queen Anne Boleyn was, in the twenty-eighth year of Henry the Eighth.

The husband of a queen regnant is her subject, as Prince George of Denmark was to Queen Anne,] and as his late royal highness Prince Albert, (under the title of the Prince Consort,) was to Queen Victoria. His position as a subject was shown by the fact that, under his Act of Naturalization (3 & 4 Vict. c. 2), Prince Albert was required to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.

[A queen dowager is the widow of a king, and, as such, retains most of the privileges which belonged to her as queen consort, though it is not high treason to conspire her death, or to violate her chastity, the succession to the Crown not being thereby endangered. Yet still, pro dignitate regali, no man may marry the queen dowager without special licence from the king, on pain of forfeiting his lands and goods; for this was so enacted in parliament, Sir Edward Coke tells us, in the sixth year of Henry the Sixth, though the statute is not extant, and the point seems doubtful (†). A queen dowager, alien born, is entitled by the common law to dower after the

() 2 Inst. 18; Riley, Plac. Parl. 72; Co. Litt. 31,

[king's demise, though, in general, the alien wife of a subject was not entitled to dower (u). Again, a queen dowager, if she marry a subject, doth not lose her regal dignity, as peeresses dowager, when commoners by birth, lose their peerage when they marry commoners; and so Catherine, widow of King Henry the Fifth, though she married a private gentleman, Owen ap Meredith ap Theodore (commonly called Owen Tudor), yet maintained an action against the Bishop of Carlisle by the name of Catherine "queen of England." And the queen dowager of Navarre, who was married to 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 („).

The eldest son of the monarch, the heir apparent to the crown, and also his royal consort, and the princess royal, or eldest daughter of the king, are all likewise peculiarly regarded by the laws; and to compass or conspire the death of the former, or to violate the chastity of either of the latter, is as much treason under the Statute of Treasons, 1351, as to conspire the death of the king, or to violate the chastity of the queen. The reason of this is, 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 because the eldest daughter of the sovereign is also inheritable as sole heir to the crown, on failure of issue male, and therefore more respected by the laws than any of her younger sisters. The heir apparent to the crown is usually made Prince of Wales (y) and Earl of Chester, by special creation and investiture, i.e.,. by letters patent under the great seal; but, in virtue

(u) Co. Litt. 31 b. () 2 Inst. 50.

(y) 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 only heir presumptive to the crown.

[of being the monarch's eldest son, he is, by inheritance, Duke of Cornwall, without any new creation (z).

The younger sons and daughters of the king, and other branches of the royal family, who are not in the immediate line of succession, are little further regarded by the antient laws, 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 31 Hen. VIII. (1539), 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 the great officers of state therein named shall have precedence above all dukes, except only such as shall happen to be the king's son, brother, uncle, brother's or sister's son; and under the description of the king's children, his grandsons are held to be included (a). And therefore, when 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 that he ought to have place next to the 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 (b). But when, on the accession of King George the Third, those royal personages ceased to take place as the children, and ranked only as the brothers and uncles, of the king, they 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

(2) The Prince's Case (1606), 8 Rep. 1; Simpson v. Clayton (1838), 4 Bing. N. C. 758. As to the property of the Prince of Wales, in his duchy of Cornwall, see the Acts specified in App. II. to the Index to the Statutes ; as to his mines there, see Cornwall Submarine Mines Act, 1858; and as to the limitation of suits

by him in relation to the duchy, see also the Crown Suits Acts, 1769, and 1861, s. 2. As to the expenditure of the heir apparent, see the Heir Apparent's Establishment Act, 1795.

(a) 4 Inst. 362.

(b) Lords Journ. 24th April, 1760.

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