something belonging to a king; thus we say, royal family, royal assent, royal exchange, &c.

Royal Family. The first and most considerable branch of the king's royal family, regarded by the laws of England, is the queen.

1. The queen of England is either queen regent, queen consort, or queen dowager. The queen regent, regnant, or sovereign, 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 such a one has the same powers, prerogatives, right, dignities, and duties, as if she had been a king. This is expressly declared by statute 1 Mar. I. st. 3. c. i. But the queen consort is the wife of the reigning king; and she by virtue of her marriage is participant of divers prerogatives above other women.

And, first, she is a public person, exempt and distinct from the king; and not, like other married women, so closely connected as to have lost all legal or separate 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 do: a privilege as old as the Saxon era. She is also capable of taking a grant from the king, which no other wife is from her husband; and in this particular she agrees with the augusta or piissima regina conjux divi imperatoris of the Roman laws; who, according to Justinian, was equally capable of making a grant to, and receiving one from, the emperor. The queen of England hath separate courts and officers distinct from the king's, not only in matters of ceremony, but even of law; and her attorney and solicitor general are entitled to a place within the bar of his majesty's courts, together with the king's counsel. She may likewise sue and be sued alone, without joining her husband. She may also have a separate property in goods as 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 single, not as a married woman. For which the reason given by Sir 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 domestic affairs; and therefore it vests in the queen a power of transacting her own concerns, without the intervention of the king, as if she were an unmarried woman.

The queen hath also many exemptions, and minute prerogatives. For instance: she pays no toll; nor is she liable to any amercement in any court. But in general, unless where the law has expressly declared her exempt, 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, Augustus legibus solutus non est.

The queen hath also some pecuniary advantages, which form her distinct revenue: as, in the first place, she is entitled to an ancient perquisite called queen gold, or aurum reginae; which is a royal revenue belonging to every queen consort during her marriage with the king, and due from every person who hath made a voluntary offering or fine to the king, amounting to 10 merks or upwards, for and in consideration 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 to one-tenth part more, over and above the entire offering or fine made to the king, and becomes an actual debt of record to the queen's majesty by the mere recording of the fine. As, if 100 merks of silver 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 entitled to 10 merks in silver, or (what was formerly an equivalent denomination) to one merk 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; or for fines imposed by courts on offenders against their will; nor for voluntary presents to the king, without any consideration moving from him to the subject; nor for any sale or contract whereby the present revenues or possessions of the crown are granted away or diminished.

The original revenue of our ancient queens, before and soon after the conquest, seems to have consisted in certain certain reservations or rents out of the demesne lands of the crown, which were expressly appropriated to her majesty, distinct from the king. It is 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. These were frequently appropriated to particular purposes: to buy wood for her majesty's use, to purchase oil for 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 80 pounds: A practice somewhat similar to that of the eastern countries, wherewhile cities and provinces were specifically assigned to purchase particular parts of the queen's apparel. 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 its payment, though obscure ones, in the book of domesday, and in the great pipe-roll of Henry I. In the reign of Henry II. the manner of collecting it appears to have been well understood; and it forms a distinct head in the ancient 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 consorts of England till the death of Henry VIII.; though after the accession of the Tudor family, the collecting of it seems to have been much neglected: and there being no queen consort afterwards till the accession of James I. a period of near 60 years, its very nature and quantity then became a matter of doubt; and being referred by the 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 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 consort at the price of 10,000 pounds; finding it, perhaps, too trifling and troublesome to levy. And, when afterwards, at the Restoration, by the abolition of military tenures, and the fines that were consequent upon them, the little that legally remained of this revenue was reduced to almost nothing at all; in vain did Mr Pryane, by a treatise that does honour to his abilities as a painful and judicious antiquarian, endeavour to excite Queen Catherine to revive this antiquated claim.

Another ancient perquisite belonging to the queen consort, mentioned by all our old writers, and therefore only worthy notice, is this: that on the taking a whale on the coasts, 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 sturgeonia observetur, quod rex illam habeat integrum; de balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam. The reason of this whimsical division, as assigned by our ancient records, was, to furnish the queen's wardrobe with whale-bone.

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 upon the same footing with the king. It is equally treason (by the statute 25 Edward III.) to imagine or compass the death of our lady the king's companion, as of the king himself; and to violate or defile the queen consort, amounts to the same high crime; as well in the person committing the fact, as in the queen herself if consenting. A law of Henry VIII. made it treason also 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 modesty. If however the queen be accused of any species of treason, she shall (whether consort or dowager) be tried by the peers of parliament, as Queen Ann Boleyn was in 28 Hen. VIII.

The husband of a queen regnant, as Prince George of Denmark was to Queen Anne, is her subject; and may be guilty of high treason against her; but, in the instance of conjugal fidelity, he is not subjected to the same penal restrictions. For which the reason seems to be, that if a queen consort is unfaithful to the royal bed, this may debase or bastardize the heirs to the crown; but no such danger can be consequent on the infidelity of the husband to a queen regnant.

2. A queen dowager is the widow of the king, and as such enjoys most of the privileges belonging to her as queen consort. But it is not high treason to conspire her death, or to violate her chastity; for the same reason as was before alleged, because the succession to the crown is not thereby endangered. Yet still, pro dignitate regali, no man can marry a queen dowager without special licence from the king, on pain of forfeiting his lands and goods. This Sir Edward Coke tells us, was enacted in parliament in 6 Henry VI., though the statute be not in print. But she, though an alien born, shall still be entitled to dower after the king's demise, which no other alien is. A queen dowager when married again to a subject, doth not lose her regal dignity, as peeresses-dowager do when they marry commoners. For Katherine, queen dowager of Henry V. though she married a private gentleman, Owen ap Meredith ap Theodore, commonly called Owen Tudor; yet, by the name of Katherine queen of England, maintained an action against the bishop of Carlisle. And so the dowager of Navarre marrying with Edmond the brother of King Edward I. maintained an action of dower by the name of queen of Navarre.

3. The prince of Wales, or heir apparent to the crown, and also his royal consort and the princess royal, or eldest daughter of the king, are likewise peculiarly regarded by the laws. For, by statute 25 Edw. III. to compass or conspire the death of the former, or to violate the chastity of either of the latter, are as much high treason as to conspire the death of the king or violate the chastity of the queen. And this upon the same reason as was before given; 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 the eldest daughter of the king is also alone inheritable to the crown on failure of issue male, and therefore more respected by the laws than any of her younger sisters; insomuch that upon this, united with other (feodal) principles, while our military tenures were in force, the king might levy an aid for marrying his eldest daughter, and her only. The heir apparent to the crown is usually made prince of Wales and earl of Chester, by special creation and investiture; but being the king's eldest son, he is by inheritance duke of Cornwall, without any new creation.

4. The rest of the royal family may be considered in two different lights, according to the different senses in which the term royal family is used. The larger sense includes all those who are by any possibility inheritable to the crown. Such, before the revolution, were all the descendants of William the Conqueror; who had branched into an amazing extent by intermarriages with the ancient nobility. Since the revolution and act of settlement, it means the Protestant issue of the princess Sophia; now comparatively few in number, but which in process of time may possibly be as largely diffused. The more confined sense includes only those who are in a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning prince, and to whom therefore the law pays an extraordinary regard and respect; but after that degree is past, they fall into the rank of ordinary subjects, and are seldom considered any farther unless called to the succession upon failure of the nearer lines. For though collateral consanguinity is regarded indefinitely with respect to inheritance or succession, yet it can only be regarded within some certain limits in any other respect, by the natural constitution of things and the dictates of positive law.

The younger sons and daughters of the king, and other branches of the royal family, who are not in the immediate line of succession, were therefore little farther regarded by the ancient law, than to give them a certain degree of precedence before all peers and public officers as well ecclesiastical as temporal. This is done by the statute 31 Henry VIII. c. 10. which enacts, that no person except the king's children shall presume to fix or have place at the side of the cloth of estate in the parliament chamber; and that certain great officers therein named shall have precedence, above all dukes, except only such as shall happen to be the king's son, brother, uncle, nephew (which Sir Edward Coke explains to signify grandson or nepos), or brother's or sister's son. But under the description of the king's children, his grandsons are held to be included, without having recourse to Sir Edward Coke's interpretation of nephew; and therefore when his late majesty King George II. 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 precedence next to the late 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. But when, on the accession of his present majesty, these royal personages ceased to take place as the children, and ranked only as the brothers and uncles of the king, they also 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 the house of peers, he was placed on the upper end of the earls bench (on which the dukes usually sit) next to his royal highness the duke of York. And in 1717, upon a question referred to all the judges by King George I. it was resolved, by the opinion of ten against the other two, that the education and care of all the king's grandchildren, while minors, did belong of right to his majesty as king of this realm, even during their father's life. But they all agreed, that the care and approbation of their marriages, when grown up, belonged to the king their grandfather. And the judges have more recently concurred in opinion, that this care and approbation extend also to the presumptive heir of the crown; though to what other branches of the royal family the same did extend, they did not find precisely determined. The most frequent instances of the crown's interposition go no farther than nephews and nieces; but examples are not wanting of its reaching to more distant collaterals. And the statute of Henry VI. before mentioned, which prohibits the marriage of a queen-dowager without the consent of the king, assigns this reason for it: "because the disparagement of the queen shall give greater comfort and example to other ladies of estate, who are of the blood-royal, more lightly to disparage themselves." Therefore by the statute 28 Hen. VIII. c. 18. (repealed, among other statutes of treasons, by 1 Edw. VI. c. 12.) it was made high treason for any man to contract marriage with the king's children or reputed children, his sisters or aunts ex parte paterna, or the children of his brethren or sisters; being exactly the same degrees to which precedence is allowed by the statute 31 Hen. VIII. before mentioned. And now, by statute 12 Geo. III. c. 11. no descendant of the body of King Geo. II. (other than the issue of princesses married into foreign families) is capable of contracting matrimony, without the previous consent of the king signified under the great seal; and any marriage contracted without such a consent is void. Provided, that such of the said descendants as are not above 25, may, after a twelvemonth's notice given to the king's privy-council, contract and solemnize marriage without the consent of the crown; unless both houses of parliament shall, before the expiration of the said year, expressly declare their disapprobation of such intended marriage. And all persons solemnizing, assisting, or being present at any such prohibited marriage, shall incur the penalties of the statute of prenuptial.