Heir to the throne

“ Recognising the deficiencies of the presumed heir to the throne of France, he determined to educate him as befitted his lofty rank, and declared himself willing, if he could not obtain the liberty of the prince, to share his captivity, and to teach him, in a dungeon, his duty towards God and man. He also entered into a lengthy correspondence with illustrious royalists to secure their co-operation in his plans, and even projected a matrimonial alliance for his illustrious protégé. ”

“ Sweetheart—listen! Beyond all of this there is that thought, that hope, ever in my heart that one day a son of ours shall worthily fill a throne, so we must not think of ourselves, my Paul, of the Thou, and the I, and the Now, beloved. A throne which is filled most ignobly at present, and only filled at all through my birth and my family's influence. Think not I want to plant a cheat. No! I have a right to find an heir as I will, a splendid heir who shall redeem the land—the spirit of our two selves given being by love, and endowed by the gods. Ah! think of it, Paul. ”

“ The succession to the throne was confined to the royal family, to the male line, and to the sons of noble wives; the eldest son seems to have been the acknowledged heir to the throne, and Landa tells us that if the king died during the childhood of his heir, then his eldest or most capable brother ruled not only during the son's minority but during all his own life; and in case there were no brothers the priests and nobles chose a suitable person to reign. ”

“ In [Pg 129] the first place, he has no prince to succeed him on his throne; a male heir is denied him, notwithstanding all the prayers of himself and his subjects, and all the good deeds he performs to that end. ”

“ It is enough to state that the secret unhappiness of the Queen at not yet having the assurance of an heir was by no means weakened by the impatience of the people, nor by the accouchement of the Comtesse d’Artois of the Duc d’Angouleme. While the Queen continued the intimacy, and even held her parties at the apartments of the Duchess that she might watch over her friend, even in this triumph over herself, the poissardes grossly insulted her in her misfortune, and coarsely called on her to give heirs to the throne! ”

“ For under a rule of female kinship the heir to the throne is either the late king's brother, or the son of the late king's sister, while under a rule of male kinship the heir to the throne is the late king's son. ”

“ Females may inherit, but only in the event of the failure of male heirs. By the abdication of the direct heir, the throne may pass to a member of the royal family who stands farther removed, as it did in 1848 when the present Emperor was established on the throne while his father was yet living. ”

“ The heir-apparent to the throne is not the oldest or any other child of the king and queen, but is the queen's nearest blood relative of the male persuasion, although the relationship may be no closer, perhaps, than that of cousin. ”

“ If they have children, they are often as unhappy; and there is seldom a good understanding between the incumbent and the next heir; who sometimes takes the throne before it is vacant, and sometimes makes a vacancy: Imperium habere quam expectare mallet. And sometimes the father destroys the son, for fear of being destroyed by him ”

“ The fact that the heir to our throne is still alive and where you can lay your hands upon him seems a wonderful dispensation of an all-wise Providence; for in the event of His Majesty’s death—and he has been for two years a terrible sufferer from an incurable ailment—the crown must otherwise go, as you know, to that prince of scapegraces, Hugo. I have given your communication to the Chancellor, and you will doubtless hear from him in the near future. Fancy our future King, all unmindful, serving in the capacity of a valet! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. ”

“ One of the most important points which an hereditary potentate has to attend to, in completing his political arrangements, is the question of his marriage. Until he has a family and an heir, men's minds are unsettled in respect to the succession, and the various rival candidates and claimants to the throne are perpetually plotting and intriguing to put themselves into a position to spring at once into his place if sickness, or a battle, or any sudden accident should take him away. ”

“ The preservation of my life, which has been already several times in danger, should have been the special charge of the heir to my throne, but blinded, and estranged from all those Christian principles in which my paternal care and love have reared him, he has given his consent to a plot to dethrone me. ”

“ The heir-apparent to the throne, if a son of the reigning king, shall have the title of prince royal, the other legitimate heirs to the crown shall be culled princes, and the king's daughters princesses. Article 33. As soon as the heir shall have attained the age of eighteen, he shall have a right to sit in council, without, however, having a vote, or any responsibility. Article 34. No prince of the blood shall marry without permission of the king, and in case of contravention, he shall forfeit his right to the crown of Norway. ”

“ When they were told that, by the English law, the crown, at the moment of a demise, must descend to the next heir, they answered that, by the English law, a living man could have no heir. When they were told that there was no precedent for declaring the throne vacant, they produced from among the records in the Tower a roll of parchment, near three hundred years old, on which, in quaint characters and barbarous Latin, it was recorded that the Estates of the Realm had declared vacant the throne of a perfidious and tyrannical Plantagenet. ”

“ They know, that it is of great concernment to any people, that the heir apparent to their crown be bred amongst them; not only that he may be reconciled, by habit, to their customs and laws, and grow in love with their liberties; but that, at his accession to the throne, he may not be engrossed and beset by foreigners, who will be always in the interest of another country; and, consequently, will be attempting to mislead him into measures mischievous to his kingdom, and advantageous to themselves, or their own nation. ”

“ In the first place, hereditary succession, when finally settled in some line of descent rigorously prescribed, involves that the possession of supreme power becomes independent of capacity for exercising it. The heir to a vacant throne may be, and often is, too young for discharging its duties; or he may be, and often is, too feeble in intellect, too deficient in energy, or too much occupied with the pleasures which his position offers in unlimited amounts; with the result that in the one case the regent, and in the other the chief minister, becomes the actual ruler. ”

“ Even if the prince leaves an heir, it would be absurd to entertain the idea that, after the Stuarts have been expelled from England a hundred years, any Scotchman or Englishman would be mad enough to risk life and property to restore them to the throne. ”

“ He now openly aspired to the succession; and insisted, that since it was necessary, by the confession of all, to set aside the royal family, on account of the imbecility of Edgar, the sole surviving heir, there was no one so capable of filling the throne, as a nobleman of great power of mature age, of long experience, of approved courage and abilities, who, being a native of the kingdom, would effectually secure it against the dominion and tyranny of foreigners. ”

“ He reminded I-jên that, as simply one of a numerous family of children, his present prospects of ever coming to the throne were absolutely nil. The old King could not live much longer; the heir-apparent, then a man in the prime of life, would immediately succeed him, and his choice of a successor would probably fall on one or other of his elder sons. ”

“ The young man was legal heir to the kingdom, but his succession had been wrested from him by a usurper, who, however, dying soon after the arrival of the princess, he was reinstated in his rights and placed on the throne, when he offered her his hand; but she said, "How can I think of marriage while I know not the condition of my unfortunate family, or enjoy repose while my mother and sisters are perhaps suffering misery? When I have intelligence of their welfare I will be grateful to my deliverer." ”

“ In case the King should have no male issue, the eldest male of the Royal Family who is next of kin shall rank next in succession to the Throne. If, however, in the case supposed above, male heirs should subsequently be born to the King, the succession will de jure revert to such heir. ”

“ Murders and assassinations innumerable grew out of it. And what was it all about? you will ask. It arose from the fact that the descendants of a certain king had married and intermarried among each other in such a complicated manner that for several generations nobody could tell which of two different lines of candidates was fairly entitled to the throne. The question was settled at last by a prince who inherited the claim on one side marrying a princess who was the heir on the other. Thus the conflicting interests of the two houses were combined, and the quarrel was ended. ”

“ But whosoever sits on the throne without this title, though never so peaceably, and by consent of former kings and parliaments, is an usurper, while there is any where in the world another person who hath a nearer hereditary right, and the whole kingdom lies under mortal sin till that heir be restored; because he has a divine title which no human law can defeat. ”

“ Accession to the Throne.
It is not easy to realize that in the lifetime of our own fathers and mothers there was in England a plot to change the succession and secure the crown for the "wicked uncle," to the exclusion of the rightful heir. The whole story savors of romance, or at any rate of a much earlier period in our history, when John Lackland or Richard the Hunchback cheated their young nephews of crown and life. ”

“ No position seems to be more easily renounced than that of the occupation of the throne. In a country where the heir may have the misfortune to be brought up in the lap of luxury, and amid sensual excitements and indulgences of every kind, it is not surprising that the irksomeness of his position should make the holder sigh to be relieved from it, or that vigor of mind or body is only to be found in those cases where, the heir-apparent having been cut off, the successor has been adopted at a late period of his life, having been reared without the expectation of subsequent elevation. ”

“ As the rightful heir of the throne she was declared by Henry, her father, Princess of Wales, which is the ordinary title borne by the first-born of the king; since the administration and government of this province is allowed to no other, except to that son or daughter of the king, to whom, by hereditary right, on the death of the king the government of the realm falls.... ”

“ The heir-apparent is shown as the virtuous prince we read of in fairy tales, endowed with all the graces both of mind and person. The Prince is supported, at the foot of the throne, by such protection as Liberty and Justice are placing at his disposal; his foot is on the first step, the Voice of the People; the other steps are Public Safety, Patriotism, and Virtue; the crown remains suspended over his head, his right hand is on his heart, and Britannia is leading him to his place, while she is waving back the party which opposed his assumption of an ad interim Regency. ”

“ Whereas the Capetian monarchs, during the three hundred years that followed on the election of Hugh Capet in 987, always left an heir male, and an heir male of full age, the German kings again and again, during the same period, either left a minor to succeed to their throne, or left no issue at all. The principle of heredity began to fail because there were no heirs. ”

“ The more constitutional government has advanced, the stronger has been the jealousy between the possessor of the throne and its heir. As the sway of parties has become more pronounced and more regularly organised, the split of the royal family between these parties has become a sort of assumed liability,—fatal at once to good government and to family peace and honour. ”

“ In European monarchies, the right of succession is justly esteemed a fundamental; and even though the whole legislature be vested in a single person, it would never be permitted him, by an edict, to disinherit his lawful heir, and call a stranger or more distant relation to the throne. ”

“ Speaking of this circumstance, the Times said,—'The significance of this event is, that it marks the period when the heir to the British throne is about to take rank among men, and to enter formally upon a career, which every loyal subject of the queen will pray may be a long and a happy one, for his own sake and for the sake of the vast empire which, in the course of nature, he will one day be called to govern. ”

“ The jacobites yielded a sort of provisional allegiance to the daughter of their king, deeming her, as it were, a regent in the heir's minority, and willing to defer the consideration of his claim till he should be competent to make it, or to acquiesce in her continuance upon the throne, if she could be induced to secure his reversion. ”

“ When his brother died, pleasure, not pain, made his heart throb, as he sarcastically exclaimed, ‘It is a great blow to the country, but I hope it will recover in time.’ The death, if it did not place him next to the throne, at least gave him hopes4 of being regent should his sire die before the young heir was of age. ”

“ The order of succession was hereditary and lineal, the eldest son generally succeeding to the throne. The selection of a successor, however, was left to the reigning king, who, when he felt himself to be near his end, was at liberty to choose from among his sons the one whom he thought best fitted to govern. In order to test his capability and accustom him to handling the reigns of government, and that he might have the old monarch's advice, the chosen heir immediately began to exercise the functions of king. ”