Your correspondent may be referred to _Blackstone_ (Introd. §4.), where is a very interesting account of the Palatinate and Duchy of Lancaster. We are there told that on his succession to the crown, Henry IV. was too prudent to suffer his Duchy of Lancaster to be united to the crown, and therefore he procured an act of parliament ordaining that this duchy and his other hereditary estates-- "Should remain to him and his heirs for ever, and should remain, descend, be administered, and governed in like manner as if he had never attained the regal dignity." In the first of Edward IV., Henry VI. was attainted, and the Duchy of Lancaster declared forfeited to the crown. At the same time an act was passed to continue the county palatine, and to make the same part of the duchy; and to vest the whole in King Edward IV. and his heirs, _kings of England_, for ever. Blackstone then mentions that in the first Henry VII. an act was passed vesting the Duchy of Lancaster in that king and his heirs; and in a note examines the question whether the duchy vested in the natural or political person of the king. He then says: "It seems to have been understood very early after the statute of Henry VII., that the Duchy of Lancaster was by no means thereby made a separate inheritance from the royal patrimony, since it descended, with the crown, to the half-blood in the instances of Queens Mary and Elizabeth; which it could not have done as the estate of a mere Duke of Lancaster in the common course of legal descent." If, in saying that William III. never created himself Duke of Lancaster, your correspondent means that he caused no patent to issue granting himself that dignity, he is, I doubt not, correct. But if, after the above quotations, any doubt could remain on the subject, possibly the following extract from the act 1 Will. & Mar. sess. 2. cap. 2. ("An Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, and settling the Succession of the Crown") will sufficiently dispel it:-- "And the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons seriously considering, &c., do hereby recognise, acknowledge, and declare, that King James II. having abdicated the Government, and their Majesties having accepted the Crown and Royal dignity as aforesaid, their said Majesties did become, were, and are, and of right ought to be, by the laws of this realm, our sovereign liege lord and lady the King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, in and to whose princely persons the Royal state, crown, and dignity of the said realms, with all _honours_, _styles_, _titles_, regalities, prerogatives, powers, jurisdictions, and authorities to the same belonging and appertaining, are most rightfully and entirely invested and incorporated, united and annexed."