'May he convert thine enemies to the benignity of peace and love, and make thee gracious and amiable in every good thing; and may he cover those that persecute and hate thee with salutary confusion; and may everlasting sanctification flourish upon thee! May he always make thee victorious and triumphant over thine enemies, visible or invisible; and pour upon thy heart both the fear and the continual love of his holy name, and make thee persevere in the right faith and in good works, granting thee peace in thy days; and with the palm of victory may he bring thee to an endless reign! And may he make them happy in this world, and the partakers of his everlasting felicity, who have willed to make thee king over his people! Bless, Lord, this elected prince, thou who rulest for ever the kingdoms of all kings. And so glorify him with thy blessing, that he may hold the sceptre of Solomon with the sublimity of a David,' &c. Grant him, by thy inspiration, so to govern thy people, as thou didst permit Solomon to obtain a peaceful kingdom.' "Designation of the State of the Kingdom. Stand and retain now the state which thou hast hitherto held by paternal succession, with_hereditary right, delegated to thee by the authority of Almighty God, and our present delivery, that is, of all the bishops and other servants of God; and in so much as thou hast beheld the clergy nearer the sacred altars, so much more remember to pay them the honour due, in suitable places. So may the Mediator of God and men confirm thee the mediator of the clergy and the common people, on the throne of this kingdom, and make thee reign with him in his eternal kingdom.' "This prayer follows: May the Almighty Lord give thee, from the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, abundance of corn, wine, and oil! May the people serve thee, and the tribes adore thee! Be the lord of thy brothers, and let the sons of thy mother bow before thee: He who blesses thee shall be filled with blessings, and God will be thy helper: May the Almighty bless thee with the blessings of the heaven above, and in the mountains and the valleys; with the blessing of the deep below; with the blessing of the suckling and the womb; with the blessings of grapes and apples; and may the blessing of the ancient fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, be heaped upon thee! Bless, Lord, the courage of this prince, and prosper the works of his hands; and by thy blessing may his land be filled with apples, with the fruits, and the dew of heaven, and of the deep below; with the fruit of the sun and moon; from the top of the ancient mountains, from the apples of the eternal hills, and from the fruits of the earth and its fulness! May the blessing of Him who appeared in the bush come upon his head; and may the full blessing of the Lord be upon his sons, and may he steep his feet in oil. With his horn, as the horn of the rhinoceros, may he scatter the nations to the extremities of the earth; and may He who has ascended to the skies be his auxiliary for ever!' "Here the coronation ends." CHAPTER II. His Family and Officers. THE Anglo-Saxon queen was crowned, as well as the king, until the reign of Egbert, when this honour was taken from her. The crimes of the preceding queen, Eadburga, occasioned the Anglo-Saxons to depart awhile, in this respect, from the custom of all the German nations. But it was soon restored; for Ethelwulph, on his second marriage, suffered his queen, Judith, to be crowned. An account of the ceremony of her coronation has been preserved by the old Frankish writers.b The custom was not immediately reassumed in England, because the expressions of Asser imply, that in Alfred's time the disuse of the coronation continued. But, by the time of the second Ethelred, it was restored; for after the account of his coronation, the ceremonial of her coronation follows. She was anointed; and, after a prayer, a ring was given to her, and then she was crowned. The queen's name is joined with the cyning's in some charters, and it is not unusual to find them signed by her. From them we learn that she often sat in the witena-gemot, even after she became queen-dowager. She had her separate property; for, in a gift of land by Ethelswitha, the queen of Alfred, she gives fifteen manentes, calling them a part of the land of her own power. She had also officers of her own household; for the persons, with whose consent and testimony she made the grant, are called her nobles. The king's sons had lands appropriated to them, even though under age; for Ethelred says, that, on his brother being elected king, "the nobles delivered to me, for my use, the lands belonging to the king's sons." These, on the death of the princes, or on their accession to the sovereignty, became the property of the king; for, he adds, "my brother dying, I assumed the dominion, both of the royal lands, and of those belonging to the king's sons." Among the royal household we find the disc thegn, or the thegn of his dishes; the hregal thegn, or the thegn of his wardrobe; a Asser, Vit. Alfr. p. 10, 11. p. 423. b It may be seen in Du Chesne's Collection of the Frankish Historians, tom. ii. 105. c Cott. MS. Claud. A. 3. MS. Claud. c. 9, p. • Ibid. e his hors thegn, or the thegn of the stud; his camerarius, or chamberlain; his propincenarius and pincerna, or cup-bearer; his secretaries; his chancellor; and, in an humble rank, his mægden, his grindende theowa, his fedesl, his ambiht-smith, his horswealh, his geneat, and his laadrinc. But we may remark, that his cupbearer and feeder, or probably taster, were both females. The executive officers of his government will be mentioned hereafter. CHAPTER III. The Dignity and Prerogatives of the Anglo-Saxon Cyning. his FIVE descriptions of kings have appeared in the world; the FATHER at the head of his family; the most ancient sovereign, once exhibited in the Jewish Patriarch, but now perhaps obsolete, unless in the simplicity of some portions of Africa. The ELDER, governing his descendants and tribe rather by influence and persuasion than power, as the North American sachems; the Arabian sheiks; and some Tartarian hordes. The IMPERATOR, or military sovereign, commanding among his people as among soldiers, like the emperors of Rome. The DESPOT LORD, ruling his nation like his vassal slaves, without check, sympathy, consideration, or responsibility, like the shereffs of Morocco, the dey of Algiers, and, in a great measure, the sultans of Turkey: and the Teutonic KINGS, who are neither fathers, elders, imperators, nor despotic lords, but who are a creation of social wisdom far more excellent in conception, and more beneficial in practice than either of the others. The father king must cease to exist when the family becomes a tribe. The elder king, who then succeeds, suits not a numerous, enterprising, and extensively-spread nation. The imperator, or the despot lord, must then be resorted to, or tyrannical oligarchies, severe aristocracies, or factious democracies, must be substituted; or else an anomalous, and discordant, and not lasting combination of some of these forms; which was attempted at Athens, Carthage, Rome, and Sparta, with no permanent advantage, or possibility of long continuance. The experience and sagacity of the ancient world went no farther than to use one or other of these institutions. It was reserved for those whom we unjustly call Barbarians, the descendants of the Scythian, Gothic, or Teutonic nomades, to invent, and to reduce to practice, a form of monarchy, under the name of kings, with powers so great, yet so limited; so superior and independent in the theory of law, and yet so subordinate to it, and so governed by it; so majestic, yet so popular; so dignified, yet so watched; so intrusted, yet so criticised; so powerful, yet so counteracted; so honoured, yet so counselled; so wealthy, yet so dependent, that all the good which sovereignty can impart is enjoyed largely by the nations whom they sway, with as few as possible of the evils which continued power must always tend to occasion, and which no human wisdom, while the executing instruments of its plans are imperfect mortals, can absolutely prevent. Such an institution was the Anglo-Saxon cyning; and such, with all the improvements which a free-spirited nation has at various times added to it, is the British monarchy under which we are now reposing. The Anglo-Saxon cyning reigned, as his kingly successors reign, by no divine right. His office was the invention, his appointment was the election, of his people; as the succession of our present sovereign is the ordination of law made by all the orders of the people in their great united parliamentary council. But religion has wisely taught us to consider the reigning sovereign as a consecrated functionary; not to give him the right divine of doing wrong, but to guard his person and character, for the sake of that welfare of the society for which they were created, with all the veneration which can be obtained from human sympathies; and with all that attachment which will most effectually promote the utility of his great office. Hence he was, as already shown, anointed, prayed for, and said to reign by the grace of God. Hence violence to his person has been always considered as a species of sacrilege. Hence, without adopting the impious deification of the Roman emperors, or the analogous adulation with which those of China and the East are to their own moral prejudice surrounded, our kings have been always considered with a degree of religious as well as civil respect, enough to raise them above every other class of society in character as well as dignity and prerogative; but not enough to emancipate them from all legal obligations, nor to elevate them above that law to which both sovereign and people are equally subject. That this state of subordination to the laws was the principle of the Anglo-Saxon royalty we may safely infer from the emphatic words of our ancient and venerable Bracton. The Norman kings were certainly not inferior in power or prerogative to the Anglo-Saxon; yet of the kingly power in his day, that of Henry the Third, and viewing it as connected with the usages of what then was English antiquity, he says: "KINGS ought not to be under man, but under God, AND THE LAW, because THE LAW MAKES THE KING. The King ascribes to the Law what the Law Hence Bracton calls the king the Vicarius Dei, p. 5. The minister and vicarius of God, p. 55. ascribes to him; that is, dignity and power; for he is not King where his will governs, and not the Law.b "The King has a superior, God; ALSO THE LAW, BY WHICH HE IS MADE KING; also this court, that is, of the earls and barons (the parliament); therefore, if the King should be without a bridle, that is, without Law, They ought to put a bridle upon Him.c "The English laws are not whatever is rashly presumed from the will of the King; but what, with the intention of establishing laws, shall be rightly determined by the council of his magistrates (the parliament), the King presiding in authority, and in the deliberation and discussion having been had upon this subject."a So our ancient law-book, Fleta, written under the successful and powerful Edward the First, thus expresses the same ideas, imitating or copying its predecessor: "The King has superiors in ruling the people; as THE LAW, by which he is made King; and his court, that is, the earls and barons," meaning by these, the parliament. "The King ought not to have an equal in his kingdom; for an equal has no government over an equal: nor ought he to have any superior but God AND THE LAW. And because BY THE LAW he is made King, it is fit that domination and power should be ascribed to the Law, and should be defended by him on whom THE LAW has bestowed honour and power. He governs badly when a will shall govern in him dissonant to the law.f "He is not called King from reigning, but the name is assumed from wellgoverning. He is a King while he governs well; but a Tyrant when he oppresses his people by his violated domination.s To this He is elected that he may cause justice to be exhibited equally to all who are subject to him, accepting the person of no one: that in him the Lord may sit, and by hin decree judgment. It concerns him to defend and sustain what shall be justly judged; because if there was not one who would do justice, peace would easily be exterminated.1 "He has the power of coercion, that he may punish and restrain the delinquents; and have it in his power to make the laws, customs, and assizes pro vided, approved, and sworn in his kingdom, to be firmly observed BY HIMSELF and all his subjects. "He ought to excel all in his kingdom in power, because He ought not to have a peer, and much more a superior, in administering justice. Yet, though he excel all in power, his heart should be in the hand of God; and that his power may not remain unbridled, let him apply the bridle of temperance and the reins of moderation, that He be not drawn to do injury, who can do nothing in the land BUT WHAT HE CAN DO BY LAW.J "For this HE IS CREATED AND CHOSEN KING, that he may do justice to all." It is in the same strain that our judge Fortescue writes, in the reign of Henry the Sixth: "The King of England cannot change the laws of his kingdom at his will.' "He cannot change the laws without the assent of his subjects; nor burthen his people with strange impositions." b Bracton, p. 5. Fleta, Proemium. Ibid. * Ibid. p. 18. 112 |