The Dictionary of English History

conception was now combined with the high monarchical theorisings of James I., and the doctrine of the rising Arminian party that the origin of government was to be found in that patriarchal society, whose monarchical constitution was the precedent for all time, that an indefeasible divine right entitled the next heir by hereditary succession to the monarchy, that all constitutional checks on the crown are of favour and not of right, and that passive obedience was in all cases to be paid to the established monarch. This was supplemented by lawyers zealous for the dignity of the fountain of justice, and by reformers who could see in the royal prerogative the only way to progress and improvement; but the antagonistic claims of Parliament soon reduced these theories into unreality. The Civil War practically decided the struggle. However Hobbes might theorise on the absolutism of the sovereign state, or Filmer on the patriarchal basis of divine rights; however parliaments might record their approval of the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance, the government under Charles II. was practically in the hands of two political parties, of which one might indeed be more personally favourable to the monarch, but the Tories' adulation of the royal power was turned into open rebellion when James II. took them at their word, and lost his throne in consequence.

The Revolution of 1681 was the triumph of the Whig theory of monarchy, which Locke's political treatises had developed against Filmer. The sovereign owed his position to the "original contract " between king and people. The violation of this led to an ipso facto abdication; for the social contract was not, as Hobbes maintained, absolute and indefeasible, but terminable if broken. But not only was the power of the sovereign thus limited in theory, not only was the ultimately elective character of the monarchy re-asserted, and all the old checks recapitulated and enlarged, but the distinction between the crown and the king, between the royal office and the royal person, which the Long Parliament had used to justify their rebellion, became now an essential part of that unwritten constitutional usage which, in practice, soon superseded the old legal and theoretical constitution of the country. The influence and power of the crown went on increasing, while the king's real power became less and less. Nothing but the fiction of jurists regards the nominal head of the modern English State, who "reigns but does not govern," as the real wielder of the ever-increasing executive power which is carried on in his name. The cabinet, an informal committee of Parliament, and ultimately of the House of Commons, is the real king in the mediæval sense. The old distinction of the legislative and executive power upon which the old constitution rested, has been broken down.

Many theoretical powers of the sove

reign, such as the royal veto on bills, are practically obsolete.

Indirect influence, rather than acts of authority, now makes the monarch a still important factor in English politics. George III., for a time, restored the old royal right of naming ministers, but his ultimate success rested on a harmony of royal and popular wishes which, possible under the "Venetian oligarchy" of the eighteenth century, becomes increasingly difficult when three Reform bills have brought into full power the English democracy, and made the "Patriot King" almost impossible. The continuity of English kingship, so long as it remained a reality, is very remarkable, despite the change of its forms and the fluctuations of its power.

A general view of the growth of kingship can be obtained from the Constitutional Hi tories of Stubbs, Hallam, and May. The primi tive kingship of Germany is to be studied in Tacitus' Germania. Some parts of the Dialogus de Scaccario illustrate the Angevin monarchy, and the formal treatises of medieval political philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, put mediæval monarchy on its broadest basis. Mr. Freeman's writings, while fully illustrating early English kingship, bring out clearly its continuity. Allen On the Prerogative is sometimes useful. Fortescue's book, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, is the only full original statement of the constitutional position of the medieval monarchy. The preambles to some of Henry VIII's reforming statutes, illustrate clearly the position claimed by that monarch. Aylmer's answer to Knox's Blast against the Regiment of Women; Harrison, Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle; Sir T. Smith, On the Commonwealth; and some of R leigh's political writings, show the position of the monarchy under Elizabeth. James I.'s True Law of Free Monarchies gives the theoretical, Bacon's politi cal treatises the practical basis; and Overall's Convocation Book, and Cowell's Interpreter, the ecclesiastical and legal justifications of the Stuart claims. Filmer's Patriarcha is a more elaborate statement of the divine right posi tion; Hobbes's Leviathan, a strong declarat on of the autocracy of the State, which, in prac tice, led to a despotism of the Cromwell or Richelieu type. Locke's Treatise of Government is the text-book of eighteenth century Whiggism, and in a sense, aimed against both Filmer and Hobbes. Bolingbroke's Patriot King, marks the revival of the Tory monarchical party, which ultimately carried George III. into power. Mr. Bagehot's English Constitution gives the best view of the present position of the monarchy. [T. F. T.]

REGNAL YEARS OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND "The importance of extreme accuracy,' says Sir H. Nicolas (from whose valuable Chronology of History the subjoined table is taken) "respecting the regnal years of the Kings of England, is at once shown by the fact that, in most instances, after the reign of Henry II. no other date of a year occurs, either in public or private documents, than the year of the reign of the existing monarch, and that an error respecting the exact day from which the regnal year is calculated may produce a mistake of one entire year in reducing such a date to the year of the Incarnation. Every year of a king's reign is in two years of our Lord, except (which has never yet happened in England) in the case of an accession on the 1st of January. The first year of the reign of our late sovereign commenced on the 26th of June, 1830, aud terminatel on the 25th of June, 1831. If, therefore, the be

ginning of that reign be erroneously calculatedfor example, from the 28th instead of from the 26th of June, 1830-every document dated on the 26th and 27th of June, 1 William IV., would be assigned to the year 1831 instead of the year 1830, and a similar mistake would occur on each of those days in every year of that reign. The effect of an error of even a few days, much more of one entire year in the date of events, must be evident, and a correct table of the regnal years of the Kings of England is consequently a sine quá non to the historical student.

"In using this table, it is necessary to observe that it is calculated according to the common and historical year-viz., from the 1st of January-but as the civil, ecclesiastical, and legal year for a long period began on the 25th of March, all dates between the 1st of January and the 25th of March belong, according to the civil computation, to the year before the historical year. For example, from the 1st of January to the 25th of March, in the first year of the reign of William the Conqueror, was in the civil year 1066 instead of 1067. For the same reason, Edward III.'s reign is sometimes said to have begun on the 25th of January, 1326, instead of the 25th of January, 1327; Henry V.'s on the 21st of March, 1412, instead of the 21st of March, 1413; Edward IV.'s on the 4th of March, 1460, instead of the 4th of March, 1461; and the same remark, mutatis mutandis, applies to the commencement of the reigns of Edward VI., James I., Charles II., James II., William and Mary, and Queen Anne accordingly, whether the historical or civil year be alluded to."

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.