Roman laws; who, according to Justinian (d), was equally *capable of making a grant to, and receiving one from, the [*219 ] emperor (2). 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 (e). 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 (ƒ). 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 regui), 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 was an unmarried woman. The queen hath also many exemptions and minute prerogatives. For instance: she pays no toll (g); nor is she liable to any amercement in any court (h). But in general, unless where the law has expressly declared her exempted, 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, "Augusta legibus soluta non est (i)." The queen hath also some pecuniary advantages, which Her revenue. form her a distinct revenue: as, in the first place, she is entitled to an antient perquisite called queen-gold, or aurum regina, which is a royal revenue, belonging to every queen consort during her marriage with the king, and due from every (d) Cod. 5. 16. 26. (e) Seld. tit. Hon. 1, 6, 7. (f) Finch, L. 86; Co. Litt. 133. (2) See stat. 39 & 40 Geo. III. c 88, ss. 8, 9, where it is not only recognised, as the antient law of England, that a queen consort is capable of taking, granting or disposing of property as if she were a feme sole; but (g) Co. Litt. 133. (h) Finch, L. 185. also declared (what, notwithstanding person who hath made a voluntary offering or fine to the king, amounting to ten marks or upwards, for and in consideration [*220] 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 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 (k). As, if an hundred marks 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 ten marks in silver, or (what was formerly an equivalent denomination) to one mark in gold, by the name of queen-gold, or aurum regina (1). 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 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 (m). The original revenue of our antient queens, before and soon after the conquest, seems to have consisted in 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 (n). These were frequently appropriated to particular purposes; to buy wool for her majesty's use (o), to purchase oil for her lamps (p), or to furnish her attire from head to foot (q), which was frequently very costly, as one single robe in the fifth year of Henry II. (k) Pryn. Aur. Reg. 2. (1) 12 Rep. 21; Inst. 358. (m) Ibid. Pryn. 6; Madox, Hist. Exch. 242. (n) Bedefordscire. Maner. Lestone redd. per annum xxii lib. &c.; ad opus reginæ ii uncias auri.-Herefordscire. In Lene, &c. consuetud. ut præpositus manerii veniente domina sua (regina) in maner. præsentaret ei xviii oras denar. ut esset ipsa læto animo. (Pryn. Append. to Aur. Reg. 2, 3). (0) Causa coadunandi lanam reginæ. (Domesd. ibid). (p) Civitas Lundon. Pro oleo ad lamp. ad reginæ. (Mag. rot. pip. temp. Hen. II. ibid). (q) Vicecomes Berkescire, xvi l. pra cappa reginæ. (Mag. rot. pip. 19.22 Hen. II. ibid). Civitas Lund, cordubanario regina xx s. (Mag. rot. 2 Hen. II.; Madox, Hist. Exch. 419). *stood the city of London in upwards of fourscore pounds (r). [ *221 ] A practice somewhat similar to that of the eastern countries, where whole cities and provinces were specifically assigned to purchase particular parts of the queen's apparel (s). 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 the First (t). 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 (u), 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 sixty years, its very nature and quantity became then 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 (v), 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 (w) for levying it: but afterwards purchased it of his consort 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 [ *222 ] tenures, and the fines that were consequent upon them, the little that legally remained of this revenue was reduced to al (r) Pro roba ad opus reginæ, quater xxl. et vis. viii. d. (Mag. Rot. 5 Hen. II. Ibid. 250). (s) Solere aiunt barbaros reges Persarum ac Syrorum-uxoribus civitates attribuere, hoc modo: hæc civitas mulieri redimiculum præbeat, hæc in collum, hæc in crines, &c. (Cic. in Verrem, lib. 3, cap. 33). VOL. I. U (t) See Madox, Disceptat. Epistolar. (v) Mr. Prynne, with some appear- (w) 19 Rym. Fœd. 721. Treason to compass the death of, or to violate or defile the queen consort. most nothing at all, in vain did Mr. Prynne, by a treatise which does honour to his abilities as a painful and judicious antiquary, endeavour to excite Queen Catherine to revive this antiquated claim. Another antient perquisite belonging to the queen consort, mentioned by all our old writers, and therefore only worthy notice, is this: that, on the taking of 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 sturgione observetur, quod rex illum habebit integrum: de balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam (x)." The reason of this whimsical division, as assigned by our antient records (y), was, to furnish the queen's wardrobe with whalebone (3). 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 same 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 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 the Eighth (z) 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 (4), 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. (5). (x) Bracton, 1. 8, c. 3; Britton, c. 17; Flet. 1. 1, c. 45 et 46. (y) Pryn. Aur. Reg. 127. (3) The reason is more whimsical than the division, for the whalebone lies entirely in the head.-CH. (4) This was a clause in the act which attainted Queen Catherine Howard, and her accomplices, for her incontinence; but it was not repealed till the 1 Edw. VI. c. 12, which abrogated all treasons created since the memorable statute in the 25 Edw. III. -CH. (5) Ann Boleyn was convicted of high treason in the court of the lord high-steward. One of the charges against this unhappy queen was, that she had said, "that the king never had had her heart;" a declaration, if made, in which there was probably regnant. The husband of a queen regnant, as Prince George of Husband of queen Denmark was to Queen Anne, is her subject; and may be guilty of high treason against her: but, in the instance of conjugal infidelity, he is not subjected to the same penal *restrictions: [ *223 ] 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. A queen dowager is the widow of the king, and, as such, Queen dowager. 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 (a) tells us, was enacted in parliament in 6 Hen. VI. though the statute be not in print (6). But she, though an alien born, shall still be entitled to dower after the king's demise, which no other alien is (b). A queen dowager, when married again to a subject, doth not lose her regal dignity, as peeresses dowager do their peerage when they marry commoners. For Catherine, 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 Catherine, Queen of England, maintained an action against the Bishop of Carlisle. And so, the queen dowager of Navarre marrying with Edmond, Earl of Lancaster, brother to King Edward (a) 2 Inst. 18. See Riley's Plac. Parl. 72. (b) Co. Litt. 31. more truth than discretion; but this was adjudged to be a slander of her own issue, and therefore high treason, according to a statute which had been passed about two years before for her honour and protection. (Harg. St. Tr. Vol. 11, p. 10). Articles of impeachment were prepared against Queen Catherine Parr for heresy, in presuming to controvert the theological doctrines of the king; but, by her dexterity and address, she baffled the designs of her enemies, and Articles of impeachment for high (6) Mr. Hargrave, in a note to Co. Litt. 133, says, that no such statute can be found. Lord Coke there refers to it by 8 Hen. VI. No. 7; in 2 Inst. |