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defcend lineally to the issue of the reigning monarch; as it did from king John to Richard II, through a regular pedigree of fix lineal descents. As in them, the preference of males to females, and the right of primogeniture among the males, are strictly adhered to. Thus Edward V succeeded to the crown, in preference to Richard his younger brother and Elizabeth his elder sister. Like them, on failure of the male line, it descends to the issue female; according to the antient British custom remarked by Tacitus *, “Solent foeminarum ductu bellare, et fexum in imperiis non difcer"nere." Thus Mary I succeeded to Edward VI; and the line of Margaret queen of Scots, the daughter of Henry VII, succeeded on failure of the line of Henry VIII, his fon. 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 fole fucceffion to the throne having occafioned the royal law of defcents 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 partnership with her fister Elizabeth. Again: the doctrine of representation prevails in the defcent of the crown, as it does in other inheritances; whereby the lineal defcendants of any perfon deceased stand in the fame place as their ancestor, if living, would have done. Thus Richard II succeeded his grandfather Edward III, in right of his father the black prince; to the exclufion of all his uncles, his grandfather's younger children. Lastly, on failure of lineal defcendants, the crown goes to the next collateral relations of the late king; provided they are lineally defcended from the blood royal, that is, from that royal stock which originally acquired the crown. Thus Henry I fucceeded to William II, John to Richard I, and James I to Elizabeth; being all derived from the conqueror, who was then the only regal stock. But herein there is no objection (as in the cafe of common descents) to the succession of a brother, an uncle, or other collateral relation, of the half blood; that is, where the relationship proceeds not from the same couple of ancestors (which constitutes a kinsman of the whole blood) but from a single ancestor only; as when two persons are derived from the fame father, and not from the fame mother, or vice verfa: provided only, that the one ancestor, from whom both are defcended, be he from whose veins the blood royal is communicated to each. Thus Mary I inherited to Edward VI, and Elizabeth inherited to Mary; all born of the fame father, king Henry VIII, but all by different mothers. The reason of which diversity, between royal and common defcents, will be better understood hereafter, when we examine the nature of inheritances in general.

a in vit. Agricolae. Z2

conftitutes

3. THE doctrine of hereditary right does by no means imply an indefeasible right to the throne. No man will, I think, affert this, that has confidered our laws, constitution, and history, without prejudice, and with any degree of attention. It is unqueftionably in the breast of the fupreme 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. This is strictly confonant to our laws and constitution; as may be gathered from the expression so frequently used in our statute book, of "the king's majesty, his heirs, and "successors." In which we may observe, that as the word, "heirs," necessarily implies an inheritance or hereditary right, generally subsisting in the royal person, so the word, "fucceffors," distinctly taken, must imply that this inheritance may sometimes be broke through; or, that there may be a fucceffor, without being the heir, of the king. And this is so extremely reasonable, that without such a power, lodged somewhere, our polity would be very defective. For, let us barely suppose so melancholy a cafe, as that the heir apparent should be a lunatic, an ideot, or otherwise incapable of reigning: how miferable would the condition of the nation be, if he were also incapable of being fet afide! It is therefore necessary that this power should be lodged somewhere: and yet the inheritance, and regal dignity, would be very precarious indeed, if this power were exprefly and avow

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edly lodged in the hands of the subject only, to be exerted whenever prejudice, caprice, or discontent should happen to take the lead. Consequently it can no where be so properly lodged as in the two houses of parliament, by and with the consent of the reigning king; who, it is not to be supposed, will agree to any thing improperly prejudicial to the rights of his own descendants. And therefore in the king, lords, and commons, in parliament affembled, our laws have expreffly lodged it.

4.

Βυτ, fourthly; however the crown may be limited or transferred, it still retains it's descendible quality, and becomes hereditary in the wearer of it: and hence in our law the king is faid never to die, in his political capacity; though, in common with other men, he is subject to mortality in his natural: because immediately upon the natural death of Henry, William, or Edward, the king survives in his fuccessor; and the right of the crown vests, eo inftanti, 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 fir Matthew Hale observes, the right of fovereignty is fully invested in the successor by the very defcent 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 the fame manner as landed estates, to continue our former comparifon, are by the law hereditary, or defcendible to the heirs of the owner; but still there exists a power, by which the property of those lands may be transferred to another person. If this transfer be made fimply and absolutely, the lands will be hereditary in the new owner, and defcend to his heirs at law: but if the transfer be clogged with any limitations, conditions, or entails, the lands must defcend in that chanel, so limited and prescribed, and no other.

In these four points consists, as I take it, the constitutional notion of hereditary right to the throne: which will be still farther elucidated, and made clear beyond all dispute, from a short historical view of the successions to the crown of England, the doctrines of our antient lawyers, and the several acts of parliament that have from time to time been made, to create, to declare, to confirm, to limit, or to bar, the hereditary title to the throne. And in the pursuit of this enquiry 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 fucceffion. It is true, this fucceffion, through fraud, or force, or fometimes through neceffity, when in hoftile times the crown defcended on a minor or the like, has been very frequently suspended; but has always at last returned back into the old hereditary chanel, though sometimes a very confiderable period has intervened. And, even in those instances where the succession has been violated, the crown has ever been looked upon as hereditary in the wearer of it. Of which the ufurpers themselves were so sensible, that they for the most part endeavoured to vamp up some feeble shew of a title by defcent, in order to amuse the people, while they gained the possession of the kingdom. And, when poffeffion was once gained, they confidered it as the purchase or acquifition of a new estate of inheritance, and tranfmitted or endeavoured to tranfmit it to their own pofterity, by a kind of hereditary right of ufurpation.

Hift. P. С. 61.

ther

KING Egbert about the year 800, found himself in poffeffion of the throne of the west Saxons, by a long and undisturbed defcent from his ancestors of above three hundred years. How his ancestors acquired their title, whether by force, by fraud, by contract, or by election, it matters not much to enquire; and is indeed a point of such high antiquity, as must render all enquiries at best but plausible guesses. His right must be supposed indifputably good, because we know no better. The other kingdoms of the heptarchy he acquired, some by consent, but most by a voluntary fubmiffion. And it is an established maxim in civil polity, and the law of nations, that when one country is united

to

to another in such a manner, as that one keeps it's government and states, and the other lofes them; the latter entirely afsimilates or is melted down in the former, and must adopt it's laws and customs. And in pursuance of this maxim there hath ever been, since the union of the heptarchy in king Egbert, a general acquiefcence under the hereditary monarchy of the west Saxons, through all the united kingdoms.

FROM Egbert to the death of Edmund Ironfide, a period of above two hundred years, the crown descended regularly, through a fucceffion of fifteen princes, without any deviation or interruption; save only that king Edred, the uncle of Edwy, mounted the throne for about nine years, in the right of his nephew a minor, the times being very troublesome and dangerous. But this was with a view to preferve, and not to destroy, the fucceffion; and accordingly Edwy fucceeded him.

KING Edmund Ironfide was obliged, by the hoftile irruption of the Danes, at first to divide his kingdom with Canute, king of Denmark; and Canute, after his death, seised the whole of it, Edmund's fons being driven into foreign countries. Here the fucceffion was suspended by actual force, and a new family introduced upon the throne: in whom however this new acquired throne continued hereditary for three reigns; when, upon the death of Hardiknute, the antient Saxon line was restored in the perfon of Edward the confeffor.

He was not indeed the true heir to the crown, being the younger brother of king Edmund Ironfide, who had a fon Edward, firnamed (from his exile) the outlaw, still living. But this fon was then in Hungary; and, the English having just shaken off the Danish yoke, it was necessary that somebody on the spot should mount the throne; and the confeffor was the next of the royal line then in England. On his decease without issue, Harold II ufurped the throne, and almost at the fame instant came on the

• Puff. L. of N. and N. b. 8. c. 12. §. 6.

Norman

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