The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-11 00:00:00

THE LAW RELATING TO THE

QUEEN'S MARRIAGE.

(From the Legal Observer.)
The authority of the Sovereign of these realms
is omnipotent in all matters in which it is not re-
stricted by Act of Parliament. The King or Queen
Regnant (a) may therefore marry any person he or
she may please, not prohibited by any such Act.
It is, however, enacted in the first place, by statute
12 and 13 William 111., c. 2, that whosoever shall
come to the possession of the Crown shall join in
the communion of the Church of England, as by
law established ; and by the prior statute, 1 William
and Mary, s. 2, c. 2, usually called the Act of
Exclusion, that every person who shall marry a
Papist shall be excluded and for ever inca-
pable to inherit, possess, or enjoy the crown;
and that in such case the people shall be absolved
from their allegiance, and the crown shall
descend to such persons, being Protestants, as
would have inherited the same in case the person
so marrying were naturally dead, the crown, in the
words of Blackstone, " being limited to such
heirs only of the Princess Sophia as arc Protes-
tant Members of the Church of England, and are
married to none but Protestants." (b.) The King
or Queen, therefore, may marry any person of the
other sex not being a Papist, for we are not aware
that the restriction extends to any other religion, or
that the person so married need be in the commu-
nion of the Church of England.
The marriage of our present gracious Sovereign
is of considerable interest in a legal and constitu-
tional point of view, with regard to the precise
situation which her intended husband shall fill,
and the rights, powers, and privileges which are to
be given to him.
There are only two precedents in our history of
a married Queen Regnant ; these are, the first
Queen Mary and Queen Anne (for the situation of
the second Mary, the consort of William 111., as a
Queen, is anomalous, and need not here be consi-
dered), and we shall state what was done in both
these cases.

In the instance of the first Mary an Act was
passed in the third Session of the first year of her
reign, chap. 1, to declare (according to the title)
that " the regal power of this realm is as full in the
Queen's Majesty as ever it was in any of
her noble ancestors," it being enacted by
sec. 3, " that the Royal power, and all the
dignities of the same shall be as well in a
Queen as a King,"—an enactment certainly quite
unnecessary. By chapter 2, of the same section,
the articles of marriage between Philip Prince of
Spain and the Queen are rehearsed and confirmed.
And it was enacted that the Queen shall and may
only as a sale Queen use and enjoy the crown and
sovereignty over her dominions, in such large manner
in all degrees, after the solemnization of the mu-
riage, as she now bath, without any right, claim,
or demand to be given, come, or grow unto the said
Prince as tenant by the courtesy of this realm, or by
any other means. This is the substance of this
statute, as printed in the ordinary editions of the
statutes at large ; but it may be observed that the
following account of the Act is given in the firs
volume of the Parliamentary History (c) :
" On the 7th of April, 1554, a Bill was brought
into the Lords to confirm certain articles and agree-
ments touching the marriage between the Queen
and the Prince of Spain. It was read only once
on that day, and committed to the Earl of Shrews-
bury, the Bishops of Durham, &c. ; on the 9th
the Bill was read again. The next day it passed
that House, and was sent down to the Commons,
who returned it concluded on the 12th. The fol-
lowing is an abstract of the Act by which this
marriage was concluded:—" I. That Philip should
not advance any person to any public office or dig-
nity in England but such as were natives of the realm
and the Queen's subjects ; that he should admit a
set number of English into his household, whom he
should use respectfully, and not suffer them to be in-
jured by foreigners. That he should not transport the
Queen out of England, but at her entreaty; nor any of
the issue begotten of her, but they should have
their education in this realm, and should not be
suffered, but upon necessity and good reasons, to go
out of the same; nor then neither, but with the
consent of the English. That, the Queen decea-
sing without children, Philip should not make
any claim to the kingdom, but should leave it
freely to him to whom of right it should belong.
That he should not change anything in the laws,
either public or private, nor the immunities and
customs of the realm, but should be forced by oath
to keep and to conform them. That he should not
transport any jewels, nor any part of the wardrobe,
nor alienate any of the revenues of the Crown.
That he should preserve our shipping, &c., in good
repair and well-manned." The marriage was
afterwards solemnized on the 20th of July, and they
were both proclaimed by these titles—" Philip and
'Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of
England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland,
Defenders of the Faith, Archduke of Austria,
&c." A new Parliament was summoned by writs
in the foregoing style, and the statutes of this reign
are called the Acts of Philip and Mary, and legal
proceedings ran in both names. Hume says (d)
that though the Queen attempted to have the ad-
ministration put into her husband's hands, she
failed in all her endeavours, and could not so much
as procure the Parliament's consent to his corona-
tion. Philip was, however, nominally, at any
rate, King of England, and it is to be observed that
at the time of his marriage he was King in no
other right. To grace the ceremony and promote
the dignity of the match (e) Charles V., his father,
created him King of Naples, on its solemnization,
but this was little more than a titular dignity. It
was subsequent to his marriage, in the year 1555,
that he became King of Spain, on the resignation
of Charles V.

In a work of some authority (j) we find the
following account of the constitutional nature of
Philip's power :—" Philip, as King, had the
honour, style and kingly name, and so had the pre-
cedency; he had to do also with the jurisdiction,
for by the articles of the marriage he was to aid the
Queen in her administration of the kingdom and
maintenance of the laws ; writs and commissions
passed under his name. He also sat in Parliament,
voted therein, and joined in the Royal assent, and
joined in the publication and execution of all laws ;
to him also was allegiance due (g), and therefore
the crime of treason was equally against his as the
Queen's crown and dignity, saving that it was re-
served to be as against him only during the time of
coverture (citing the statute 1 and 2 Philip and
Mary, c. 10); and yet, had the Queen left issue
by him, it would have been a hard adventure for the
lawyers to have given their opinion in that case,
seeing the King had been guardian to his children
during their minority." It is therefore difficult to
say that Philip was the subject of Queen Mary.
He may rather be treated as the partner of her
throne.

The second instance of a married Queen Regnant
in our history was Queen Anne, who married
George, Prince of Denmark. This Sovereign was
married many years before she came to the throne.
Her husband was, soon after the marriage, created
Duke of Cumberland, and took some part in poli-
tics, as a Peer of Parliament, in the reign of Wil-
liam 111. Thus we find him, in 1692, among those
who entered a protest in the journals of the House
of Lords against the rejection of a popular Bill (h)
of the time. The first exercise of Queen Anne's I
power on her coming to the throne was the nomi-
nation of the Prince her husband to the offices of
Generalissimo and Lord High Admiral. Being,
regarded only as a subject, however, he still con-
tinued to occupy a seat in the House of Peers, in
the quality of Duke of Cumberland (i). In a sub-
sequent period of the reign, having interfered in po-
litics, he was threatened with Parliamentary censure,
by one of the great contending parties in the I
State, which probably would have fallen on him
had he not soon afterwards died (i). Prince
George had never, at any time, any pretensions to
any character but that of a subject. In November,
1702, a provision was made for his Highness, and
the yearly sum of 100,000/. was settled on him in
case he should survive the Queen. " And this I
l'lvoahowsecol acceptableide(i thesays
m motion net
'by those who knew
would be to the Queen, I
though it was double of what any Queen of Eng-
olapnpdoseivteiornh.adTiiiimejopinritnucree,wsaos manyt years older thanhat it passed without
the Queen, and was troubled with an asthma, that
every year had ill effects upon his health, and had
brought him to great danger this winter; yet the
Queen thought it became her, as a good wife, to
have the Act passed, in which she might be the
more zealous, because it was not thought advisable
to move for an Act that should take Prince George
into partnership of the regal dignity." (k.)