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CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

OF THE KING'S ROYAL FAMILY.

T

HE first and most confiderable 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 confort, or queen dowager. The queen regent, regnant, or fovereign, is she who holds the crown in her own right; as the first (and perhaps the second) queen Mary, queen Elizabeth, and queen Anne; and fuch a one has the fame powers, prerogatives, rights, dignities, and duties, as if she had been a king. This was obferved in the entrance of the last chapter, and is exprefily declared by statute I Mar. I. ft. 3. c. 1. But the queen confort is the wife of the reigning king; and the by virtue of her marriage is participant of divers prerogatives above other women *.

AND, first, she is a public person, exempt and diftinct from the king; and not, like other married women, fo closely connected as to have lost all legal or feparate 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 dob: a privilege as old as the

a Finch. L. 86.

D

4 Rep. 23.

Saxon

Saxon aera. She is also capable of taking a grant from the king, which no other wife is from her husband; and in this particular the agrees with the augufta, or piiffima regina conjux divi imperatoris of the Roman laws; who, according to Justiniand, was equally capable of making a grant to, and receiving one from, the emperor. The queen of England hath feparate courts and officers diftinct from the king's, not only in matters of ceremony, but even of law; and her attorney and folicitor general are intitled to a place within the bar of his majesty's courts, together with the king's counsel. She may also sue and be fued alone, without joining her husband. She may also have a feparate property in goods ás 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 feme covert; as a fingle, not as a married woman f. For which the reason given by fir Edward Coke is this: because the wisdom of the common law would not have the king (whose continual care and study is for the public, and circa ardua regni) to be troubled and disquieted on account of his wife's domeftic affairs; and therefore it vests in the queen a power of transacting her own concerns, without the intervention of the king, as if she was an unmarried woman.

THE queen hath also many exemptions, and minute prerogatives. For inftance: the pays no toll; nor is she liable to any amercement in any court. But in general, unless where the law has expreffly declared her exempted, she is upon the fame footing with other fubjects; being to all intents and purposes the king's subject, and not his equal: in like manner as, in the imperial law, "augusta legibus foluta non eft."

THE queen hath also some pecuniary advantages, which form her a distinct revenue: as, in the first place, she is intitled to an

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Finch. L. 86. Co. Litt. 133.

antient

antient perquisite called queen-gold or aurum reginae; which is a royal revenue, belonging to every queen confort during her marriage with the king, and due from every person who hath made a voluntary offering or fine to the king, amounting to ten marks or upwards, for and in confideration of any privileges, grants, licences, pardons, or other matter of royal favour conferred upon him by the king : and it is due in the proportion of one tenth part more, over and above the intire offering or fine made to the king; and becomes an actual debt of record to the queen's majesty by the mere recording the finek. As, if an hundred marks of filver be given to the king for liberty to take in mortmain, or to have a fair, market, park, chase, or free warren; there the queen is intitled to ten marks in silver, or (what was formerly an equivalent denomination) to one mark in gold, by the name of queen-gold, or aurum reginae'. But no such payment is due for any aids or subsidies granted to the king in parliament or convocation; nor for fines imposed by courts on offenders, against their will; nor for voluntary presents to the king, without any confideration moving from him to the subject; nor for any fale or contract whereby the present revenues or possessions of the crown are granted away or diminished".

THE revenue of our antient queens, before and foon after the conquest, seems to have consisted in certain refervations or rents out of the demesne lands of the crown, which were expreffly appropriated to her majesty, distinct from the king. It is frequent in domesday-book, after specifying the rent due to the crown, to add likewife the quantity of gold or other renders referved to the queen". These were frequently appropriated to particular purpofes; to buy wool for her majesty's use, to purchase oyl for her

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lamps, or to furnish her attire from head to foot, which was frequently very costly, as one single robe in the fifth year of Henry II stood the city of London in upwards of fourscore pounds. A practice somewhat similar to that of the eastern countries, where whole cities and provinces were specifically affigned to purchase particular parts of the queen's apparels. And, for a farther addition to her income, this duty of queen-gold is supposed to have been 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. There are traces of it's payment, though obfcure ones, in the book of domesday and in the great pipe-roll of Henry the first'. In the reign of Henry the second the manner of collecting it appears to have been well understood, and it forms a distinct head in the antient dialogue of the exchequer" written in the time of that prince, and usually attributed to Gervase of Tilbury. From that time downwards it was regularly claimed and enjoyed by all the queen conforts of England till the death of Henry VIII; though after the acceffion of the Tudor family the collecting of it seems to have been much neglected: and, there being no queen confort afterwards till the acceffion of James I, a period of near fixty years, it's very nature and quantity became then a matter of doubt : and, being referred by the king to his then chief justices and chief baron, their report of it was so very unfavorable", that queen Anne (though the claimed it) yet never thought proper to exact it. In 1635, 11 Car. I, a time fertile of expedients for raising money upon dormant precedents in our old records (of which ship-money was a fatal instance) the king, at the petition of his queen Henrietta Maria, issued out his writ for levying it; but afterwards purchased it of his confort at the price of ten thousand pounds; finding it, perhaps, too trifling and troublesome to levy. And when afterwards, at the restoration, by the abolition of the military tenures, and the fines that were confequent upon them, the little that legally remained of this revenue was reduced to almost nothing at all, in vain did Mr Prynne, by a treatise which does honour to his abilities as a painful and judicious antiquarian, endeavour to excite queen Catherine to revive this antiquated claim.

P Civitas Lundon. Pro oleo ad lampad. reginae. Mag. rot. pip. temp. Hen. II. ibid.

Vicecomes Berkefcire, xvi l. pro cappa reginae. (Mag.rot. pip. 19-22 Hen. II. ibid.) Civitas Lund. cordubanario reginae xxs. Mag. Rot. 2 Hen. II. Madox hift. exch. 419.

* Pro roba ad opus reginae, quater xx l. & vis. & viii d. Mag. Rot. 5 Hen. II. ibid.250. * Solere aiunt barbaros reges Perfarum ac Syrorum - uxoribus civitates attribuere, hoc

modo; haec civitas mulieri redimiculum praebeat, haec in collum, baec in crines, &c. Cic. in Verrem. lib. 3. c. 33.

• See Madox Disceptat. epistolar.74. Pryn. Aur. Regin. Append. 5.

lib. 2. c. 26.

* Mr Prynne, with some appearance of reason, infinuates, that their researches were very fuperficial. Aur. Reg. 125.

ANOTHER antient perquisite belonging to the queen confort, mentioned by all our old writers*, and, therefore only, worthy notice, is this: that on the taking of a whale on the coafts, which is a royal fish, it shall be divided between the king and queen; the head only being the king's property, and the tail of it the queen's. “ De sturgione obfervetur, quod rex illum habebit integrum : de ba“lena vero fufficit, fi rex habeat caput, et regina caudam." The reason of this whimsical division, as assigned by our antient records, was, to furnish the queen's wardrobe with whalebone.

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 fame 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 confort, amounts to the fame high crime; as well in the perfon committing the fact, as in the queen herself, if confenting. A law of Henry the eighth made it treason alfo for any woman, who was not a virgin, to marry the king without informing him thereof. But this law was soon after repealed; it trespassing too strongly, as well on natural justice, as female mo

* Bracton, 1.3.6.3. Britton, 6.17. Fleta, 1. 1. c. 45 & 46.

y Pryn. Aur. Reg. 127.
* Stat. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 21.

defty.

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