She now prayed the King in council (July 1) to be heard by her legal
advisers against this decision--a request which was granted "as matter
of _favour_," according to the language of the minister, "but not of
right;" and, on Thursday, July 5, at ten o'clock in the morning, the
Privy Council met at Whitehall to hear her Majesty's claim argued. For
many years so large a Privy Council had not met, there being forty-nine
members present, besides a considerable number of members of parliament
not of the council.
Mr. BROUGHAM, after stating the refusal of the dean and chapter of
Westminster to grant him the use of the "_Liber Regalis_" (a formula of
the coronation ceremony in their custody), and having induced the
president to send for that volume, commenced by observing:
That "the King had the right of being crowned," was a proposition which
he thought he should have no difficulty of supporting; and that the
Queen enjoyed the same right, he thought he could establish upon exactly
the same legal ground. The ground upon which he mainly relied was a
uniform, uninterrupted practice, in the sense in which he thought he
should be permitted to use and avail himself of these terms in a court
of justice, and in which he should be justified in establishing out of
them the legal existence of any private right. That some interruptions
had arisen in this uniform practice he was prepared to admit and
explain, for they were such as did not affect the uninterrupted right;
but, in the mode in which he had to account for them, rather sanctioned
and confirmed it. There would be two propositions which he entreated
their lordships to bear in mind while he went through his narrative of
historical facts. 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 proposition, 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
Queen-Consort. 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account