Royal procession

“ But in point of fact laws are enacted by Parliament independently; verdicts are brought in by tribunals whose immunity from royal domination is thoroughly assured; and the executive functions of the state are exercised all but exclusively by the ministers and their subordinates. One who would understand what English monarchy really is must take account continually both of what the king does and may do theoretically and of what he does and may do in actual practice. ”

“ To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. ”

“ As the progress of society drew larger and larger numbers of men into the circle of princely influence, and, by withdrawing them from the jurisdiction of the free courts, rendered a systematic establishment of the Lord’s court more necessary, the officers who were charged with the superintendence of the various royal vassals, rose immeasurably in the social scale. ”

“ Charles V, in a letter to his viceroy, October 22, 1525, says that he understands that the royal courts take cognizance of the cases of the officials of the tribunal, which displeases him greatly; it is his will that the Holy Office shall be cherished and favored and that in all cases, civil and criminal, its officials are to enjoy the immunities and privileges to which they are entitled; they are to exercise their functions with all freedom, under the royal protection, guarded by the penalties expressed in the royal concessions. ”

“ At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officials—dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, centenarii—who had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. ”

“ But if they or any one of them shall have been absent, then the officials of the imperial or royal court who perform these same offices, shall carry off the reward and the perquisites of those whose absence they make good, individual for individual, according as they fill their place, and bear their name, and perform their task. ”

“ It was fully proved that, not only subordinate situations, but even deaneries and bishoprics (which had been supposed to be the rewards of piety [150] and learning) were applied for to his royal highness, through the intervention of his mistress! A great majority of the boroughmongers, of course, acquitted the duke from these charges, and talked of voting an address of thanks to him for the manner in which he discharged his official duties. Fortunately, however, the mode of investigation adopted enabled every man in the kingdom to judge for himself. ”

“ In the civil cases in which judgments are pronounced after examination and review by our said president and auditors, they are to be executed without any further appeal or petition, or other recourse, except when the case involves so large an amount that there may be ground for a further appeal to our royal person, in conformity with the provision and decree of our laws and ordinances. ”

“ Judgment of life and death was retained by the procurator. Justice was administered in the name and according to the decretals of Rome. Yet more significant, the royal house was jointly occupied by the imperial exciseman, and all his corps of assistants, registrars, collectors, publicans, informers, and spies. ”

“ Should the melancholy event take place, that the whole royal family became extinct on the male side, the council of state shall exercise the government with regal power and authority, until the estates have chosen another royal house, and the new king has taken upon himself the government. ”

“ The King alone makes Laws in Parliament. (16.) Governs both Houses as Head by himself. (17.) By his Council. (18.) By his Judges.
(1.) Hitherto I have endeavoured to shew the Natural Institution of Regal Authority, and to free it from Subjection to an Arbitrary Election of the People: It is necessary also to enquire whether Humane Laws have a Superiority over Princes; because those that maintain the Acquisition of Royal Jurisdiction from the People, do subject the Exercise of it to Positive Laws. ”

“ The feudal courts, especially those of the great lords and of the king himself, were destined to develop later into the centers of real government, with regular judicial, financial, and administrative bodies for the performance of political functions. ”

“ In 1776, the Americans laid before Europe that noble Declaration, which ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned on the porch of every royal palace. ”

“ At the accession of Henry VII, Parliament imposed the following checks on the power of the King: (1) No new tax to be levied without consent of Parliament; (2) No new law to be made without the same consent; (3) No committal to prison without a warrant specifying the offense, and the trial to be speedy; (4) Criminal charges and questions of fact in civil cases to be decided by jury; (5) The King's officers to be held responsible to the nation. ”

“ So that it is easy enough, either for the French King or the Emperor, to appoint persons in any of the said courts or Parliaments to hear any cause that the princes shall think good to appoint and commit unto them. ”

“ We absolve, at the same time, the electors, princes, and states, and all that belong to the empire, particularly the members of the supreme tribunal, and other magistrates of the empire, from those duties by which they were united to us as the legal chief of the empire, according to the constitution. ”

“ The king wished to find out, as indeed we are told in what may be considered a copy or an abstract of the original writ directing the commissioners as to their inquiries, whether he could get more from the kingdom in taxes than he was then getting. But the record of this inquest has served far different purposes in later times. It is a storehouse of information on many sides of history, personal, family, geographical, and especially economic. It tells us much also of institutions, but less than we could wish, and less than it would have told us if its purpose had been less narrowly practical. ”

“ The King's council has practically limited itself to cases in which the state has an interest, especially the maintenance of public order. Chancery became an independent court rather than the arm of the king and his council. In Chancery and the King's Bench, the intellectual revival brought by humanism inspires novel procedures to be devised to meet current problems in disputed titles to land, inheritance, debt, breach of contract, promises to perform acts or services, deceit, nuisance, defamation, and the sale of goods. ”

“ No one shall tell false news or lies about prelates, dukes, earls, barons, and other nobles and great men or the Chancellor, Treasurer, a Justice, Clerk of the Privy Seal, Steward of the King's house whereby debates and discords might arise between these lords or between the lords and the commons. Cases shall be tried by the King's Council, which included the Chancellor, Treasurer, and chief justices. ”

“ In the face of such disorders, which the magistrates could neither tolerate nor repress, the Attorney-General, accompanied by several notables, members of the Parliament, went to the King, who listened to his counsel. To the Cardinal he demonstrated the necessity of holding the Parliament and the Court in the same place, in order to display to the kingdom the spectacle of the King and his senate on the one hand and the rebel Princes on the other ”

“ We are told, for example, that a certain king puts a prince of his own house to death—and that is all. From some subsidiary document we may learn that the act was a judicial act, done after trial and sentence. Or we are told that a certain king leads his forces against another king and how the battle went—but we have to consult some other source to find that the action was taken in consequence of the refusal to pay tribute according to ancient claim and precedent. ”

“ Moreover, for the ampler security and certitude of all the above, we command and we will that all the prince electors and other princes, also the counts, barons, nobles, cities or guilds of the same, shall confirm all the aforesaid through their writings and through their oaths, and shall efficaciously bind themselves to fulfil them with good faith and without guile. But whoever shall refuse to give writings of this kind, shall, by the act itself, incur such punishment as we, by the above, have seen fit to inflict on each person according to his rank. ”

“ Most people believed that the offices of power and influence in the realm belonged to the nobility and gentry as indubitably as the throne belonged to the king. Assaulting, wounding, striking, or trying to kill a member of the Privy Council engaged in his duties was punishable by death without benefit of clergy. Civil and military commissions, patents, grants of any office or employment, including Justice of Assize, Justice of the Peace, court writs, court proceedings continued in force for six months after a king's death, unless superceded in the meantime. ”

“ In England, the institutions have been the result of those circumstances to which time has accidentally given birth. The power of the king was derived from violence, the monarch, before the act of succession, in the reign of Queen Anne, claiming the throne in virtue of the conquest by William, in 1060. In America, the institutions are the result of deliberate consultation, mutual concessions, and design. ”

“ The king ordered that all processes against him in the court of appeal and elsewhere, for damages done to individuals in regulating the repartimientos, should be discontinued, and the cases sent to himself for consideration. ”

“ All persons holding office, civil or military, or having command, or receiving pay in whatever capacity in the service or household of the King or the Duke of York, shall before a specified date appear in the court of Chancery or King’s Bench or of their respective counties openly to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. ”

“ By it, the king “at the grievous and clamorous complaints of the great men and commons of the realm of England” enacts “that all the people of the king’s ligeance of what condition that they be, which shall draw any out of the realm in plea” or any matter of which the cognizance properly belongs to the king’s court shall be allowed two months in which to answer for their contempt of the king’s rights in transferring their pleas abroad. ”

“ You shall to your utmost bear faith and allegiance to the King's majesty, his heirs and lawful successors, and shall assist and defend jurisdictions and authorities granted unto his Majesty and annext unto the Crown, against all foreign princes, persons, prelates or potentates whatsoever, be it by act of Parliament or otherwise, and generally in all things you shall be as a faithful and true servant and subject ought to do. ”

“ Frenchmen who had lived under the government of a Court which made laws by edict and possessed the right to imprison by letters-patent looked with respect upon the Parliament of England, its trial by jury, and its freedom of the press. The men who had sent a king to prison and confiscated the estates of a great part of the aristocracy could only feel compassion for a land where three-fourths of the national representatives were nominees of the Crown or of wealthy peers. ”

“ Our King, in imitation of his brother of France, strives to bring all the offices and magistracy of the kingdom, that were legally of the people’s choice, to be solely and immediately depending on his absolute will for their being, whether they arise by our common law, or be instituted by statutes or charters. ”

“ To interrogate the legislature to decide particular disputes, is not only endless, but affords great room for partiality and oppression. The answers of the emperor were called his rescripts, and these had in succeeding cases the force of perpetual laws ”

“ Three kings protested to me, that in their whole reigns they did never once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again; and they showed, with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper which virtue infused into man, was a perpetual clog to public business. ”

“ Those lords, whose respect royalty had difficulty in keeping when they were at their castles, having come to court, prostrated themselves before the throne, and yielded obedience with their whole hearts. A few words will describe this Court. The king lodged and fed in his own large palace, which was fitted for the purpose, the flower of the French nobility. Some of these lords were in his service, under the title of officers of his household--as chamberlains, purveyors, equerries, &c. Large numbers of domestic offices were created solely as an excuse for their presence. ”

“ That the king might not be too far removed from the view of the lower people, by the interposition of the great lords, their immediate superiors, he did not, as in France, leave the whole judicial power, and the profits of the county courts in the earls; but justice was administered in the king’s name by his sheriffs; who, as being deputies of the earls, were called Vice Comites, and who accounted for the profits to the king, except as for the one third, which in England was the earl’s proportion ”