the following Monday, during part of which time his honourable and learned friend, Mr. Denman, had been indisposed, and as to any alterations her majesty's claim might render necessary, there was an instance in which such alteration had been made only two days previous to the ceremony.

The marquis of Londonderry replied, that he did not intend to throw any reflection on the professional conduct of her majesty's legal advisers, but he begged leave to state that their attention must have been long since directed to this subject: that her majesty had some time ago presented a memorial, desiring to know in what way she was to attend the coronation, to which the reply was, that it rested with the king to nominate who should be present, and his majesty was advised that he could not allow her to be present. Her majesty rejoined that she should be present, if not absolutely prohibited, and it was farther replied, that his majesty's ministers advised that her majesty could not be received. Her majesty's legal advisers could not therefore be taken by surprise. Since the above, three memorials had been presented. One, June 21st, to the king as sovereign. Another, June 25th, praying to be heard by counsel, was not addressed to the king in council, which was remedied by another, dated July 1. There could therefore be no delay on the part of ministers. With respect to the last, he was authorised to say that the petition to be heard by counsel would be granted as a matter of favour, but not of right.

Mr. Denman and Mr. Brougham

severally explained, that no legal application could be properly made before the day was absolutely fixed, and ministers should not have taken advantage of a slight information to create delay.

On the question that the duke of Clarence's bill be read a third time Mr. Bernal moved that the arrears should only be from July 1, 1821, instead of 1818. For the amendment

Against it

Majority

33 94

-

61

The bill was then passed. The extra post bill was rejected by a majority of 8.

Mr. Scarlett withdrew his poor relief bill till next session.

The metropolis police bill was read a third time and passed.

PRIVY COUNCIL.

The Queen's right to be crowned.

July 5.-At ten o'clock on Thursday morning the privy council met at Whitehall, to hear her majesty's council in support of the queen's legal right to be crowned with the king at the approaching_solemnity of the coronation. For many years so large a privy council had not met, there being forty-nine privy counsellors present, together with a large assemblage of members of parliament not of the council.

As soon as the members had taken their seats, no objection was made to the admission of strangers; the small space near the door, which is only capable of containing about a dozen persons, was instantly filled.

The clerk of the council proceeded to read three memorials transmitted by her majesty to the king, asserting her legal right to participate in the honours of the coronation,

The first was the uniform exercise of the right; namely, that no king had ever been crowned, being married at the time of his coronation, without the queen consort herself partaking with the king in the solemnity of the coronation; and, secondly, that there never was a queen-consort in England who had not partaken of the ceremony of the coronation: but in making these two propositions he begged of course to be understood, as using them subject to the usual qualifications of general propositions; which were being bound to show that where any interruptions had existed, they did not compromise the general right. With interruptions as to the first proposisition he had but one to contend, which was capable of easy solution. As to the second, he could easily and satisfactorily explain whatever exceptions had arisen, for they were few, and tended to confirm the right of the queenconsort. The learned gentleman then proceeded to call the attention of the lords of the council to various records which he quoted from English history, in order to establish his proposition, the right of British queens to be crowned, from the year 784, through the Saxon and Norman lines, down to the house of Tudor. In Henry the second's reign a remarkable circumstance occurred: the solemnity of crowning his eldest son took place in his father's life-time; the prince was married to a daughter of Louis of France, and she was not crowned although her husband was. The novelty of that omission of what was considered a uniform ceremony led to a complaint and remonstrance

to the king of England, and the result was, that he had recourse for redress to the usual process of kings-to arms, and a declaration of war; and in front of his reasons for taking that step, the French king placed the omission to crown his daughter with her husband. Henry was at length obliged to submit, for he went over to France and entered into some compromise with Louis to avert hostilities, and the daughter of the French king was solemnly crowned at Winchester by bishops and other venerable and distinguished anthorities, who were sent over from France to perform the ceremony of her coronation with suitable splendour.

When Mr. Brougham had arrived at the reign of Richard the second,

The earl of Harrowby said, that as he had come to a point, he wished to inform him, that the book from the dean and chapter of Westminster was now in the council-room if he wished to refer to it.

Mr. Brougham thanked his lordship for the information, but said that he should at present prefer pursuing his line of historic narrative, and that he should by and by avail himself of their lordships' kind permission to refer to the "Liber Regalis." On arriving at the era of Henry the sixth, the learned counsel said, he should refer to the law of Scotland about the period of history at which he was passing. The Scottish documents contained enough to establish the fact, that no king of Scotland who was married at the time of his coronation, was ever crowned without his consort; nor, where the marriage took place afterwards,

A

afterwards, was there an instance in which a Scottish queen was not crowned as soon as possible after she became queen. In the Scottish statute law there was a record having reference to the coronation rights of the queenconsort of Scotland. He claimed the privilege of using the digest of the Scottish statute law, as a precedent since the union of the two kingdoms, upon the authority of an act of one of the houses of parliament in England. The learned counsel then referred to the act 1428 in the Scottish statutes, cap. 109, passed in the 8th parliament of James the first, and read the following "aith to be made to the queen, be the clergie and the barronnes:

"Quo die dominus rex, ex deliberatione et consensu totius concilii, statuit, quod omnes et singuli successores prelatorum regni quorumcunque, necnon omnes singuli hæredes futuri comitum, baronum, omniumque libere tenentium domini regis: teneantur facere consimile juramentum dominæ nostræ reginæ. Nec ullus prælatus de cetero admittatur ad suam temporalitatem, aut hæres cujusvis tenentis domini regis ad suas tenendrias, nisi prius præstet reginæ illud juramentum."

He contended, that from this authority of the Scottish statutes, his case respecting the rights of a queen-consort, so far as the coronation ceremony was concerned, was rendered irresistibly strong.

The case of Henry the seventh's queen was next quoted. She had been crowned, two years after the king's coronation. This coronation was announced by proclamation similar to that which had

announced his own two years and a month before, and the order of it, as would be seen in the Close Roll, and in Rymer, was similar to that observed at all other coronations of queens consort. The varying conduct of Henry the eighth with regard to his queens, was then accounted for. Charles the first was crowned without his queen, because of the antipathy of the people against the papists, of whom she was one: yet only nine days before he was himself crowned, a proclamation was issued for the crowning of his queen, but observing the popular feeling to be against such a measure, that ceremony was postponed. The queen was said to have objected to take any part in the coronation, unless she could be assisted in it by a popish priest, which the constitution of the country rendered absolutely impossible. The same reasons operated against the crowning of Charles the second's queen, who was also a papist. James the second and his queen were crowned together, although they were both Roman catholics. If he and his consort could reconcile it to themselves to go into a protestant cathedral, and to partake in the ceremonies of a protestant ritual, there was an end of the difficulty which he had described as originating from the words of one of the oaths having one sense to one of the parties who took them, and another to the other. Since the revolution every thing regarding this subject was well known, and every king and queen had been regularly crowned. With regard to the queen of George the first, he must beg leave to observe that, as she had never

been

been in this country, he had nothing to do with her. Besides, she was said to have been divorced from her husband by the sentence of a foreign ecclesiastical court before he ascended the throne of this country; so that it was legally impossible that she could be crowned if she had been divorced from her husband, and physically impossible if she had never set foot in the country. Her case, therefore, formed no exception to her present majesty's right. Whilst he was upon this subject he might be permitted to remark, as not extraneous to it, that he had not expected and did not expect to hear in that court, ás a bar to her majesty's claim, that some proceedings had been instituted against her. He made that assertion not on his own authority, but on the authority of a noble and learned judge, who, in giving sentence on the King and Wolfe, in the court of the highest resort in the country, had said, in consequence of some observations having been made as to the defendant having been guilty of some great offence, "If a man be guilty of ever so great an offence, and the proceedings against him fail in substantiating that offence, he is to be considered in law as innocent as if no such offence had ever been charged against him."

Friday. Mr. Brougham rose at a few minutes after ten, to resume his speech. He had yesterday gone through a long and unbroken series of precedents, showing that no king of England had ever been crowned, he being married at the time of his coronation, without his consort participating in that ceremony. Having gone so far, he contended that he had a right to

assume his larger proposition, that queens-consort had, at all times throughout the ages of English history, themselves enjoyed the ceremony of the coronation. If in one or two instances this was not done at the time when the king's own coronation took place, and supposing that there was an instance or two where the queenconsort became such after "the coronation of the king, still he would affirm, that according to all the rules of argument, of law, and of common sense, those few instances, (admitting there were some, though in point of strict fact he believed there were none,) did not in any manner or degree affect his general argument, which he held upon the authorities he had cited to be altogether incontrovertible. He was not before their lordships to show where the right which, he asserted in behalf of the queen-consort had been claimed and refused. In every instance, in which it was actually possible for a coronation of a queen to take place, he had shown that it had been solemnized. There was not a single case which, quoad that case, cast a doubt upon the uniform force of his proposition, except that of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles the first; and he reminded their lordships, it was merely a doubt so far as that particular case went. He had a right, then, to assume the larger proposition, that all queens-consort of England had, in point of fact, been crowned. Nothing was clearer in the rules of equity and law, than that non-uses did not forfeit, unless where they clearly, from the length of the lapse, involved a waver of the Where a right had been disputed

claim.