2"'' S. V. 123., May 8, '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



381 



The power of the barons, or femlal princes, as 

 they were sometimes styled, was little, if at all, 

 less absolute than that of the monarch himself. 

 Their vassuls did homage and swore fealty to them, 

 Jind not to the king, for under the feudal system 

 no person could be liegeman to two lords ; they 

 framed independent laws for and gave judgment 

 in their own baronies; they pardoned treasons, 

 felonies, &c., whilst their tenants and people 

 yielded them the selfsame aids, tallages, and ser- 

 vices that the king levied upon his vassals ; and, 

 finally, they coined, till the reign of Stephen, their 

 own money. 



The king had no right to any duties or services 

 whatsoever, but what were purely feudal. He could 

 not, therefore, enact laws without the " advice and 

 consent" of his barons; and the latter, estimating 

 their position as his assessors or co-regents, could 

 conceive no necessity for swearing to uphold what 

 they had themselves conceded or suggested. Upon 

 every accession of a chief, the duties of himself 

 and vassals were regulated solely by the reserva- 

 tions of feudal rights, and the performance of 

 these duties was enforced, once for all, by the re- 

 ciprocal oaths of the superior and inferior. As 

 the king could offer no greater pledge than his 

 realm and dignity for the discharge of his con- 

 science, so the great parliamentary barons, in 

 imitation of their chief, were wont to pledge their 

 honours (i. e. their tenures) and knighthood as 

 the security for their loyalty. No higher test of a 

 baron's sincerity could be conceived. Like his 

 chief, he literally staked his all : and the Common 

 Law seems to have taken special cognizance of 

 this fact when it exempted him from arrest, upon 

 the twofold presumption " that the most hon- 

 ourable are likeliest to-be right honest, and pay 

 even before demand, and that their fortunes are 

 sufficient to satisfy without attaching their per- 

 sons." 



The coronation oath of the king, and the oath 

 of fealty which was taken immediately afterwards 

 by the barons, were so comprehensive in their na- 

 ture, that is, so fully anticipated the obligation of 

 the one and the duties of the other, as to preclude 

 the necessity of repeating them. To this day but 

 one oath can be exacted from the sovereign, 

 namely, at his coronation ; and no oath was taken 

 by the barons before that ceremony until the ac- 

 cession of Henry VI. Whilst reciprocal oaths 

 were deemed indispensable by the monarch and 

 bis barons, no such solemn compact was entered 

 into between the latter and their vassals. Long 

 ere the innovation in the mode and time of ad- 

 ministering the oath of fealty and homage made 

 by the weakest of the Lancastrian kings, the ter- 

 ritorial designation of the baron — i. e. his title of 

 honour, implied all that was just, virtuous, and 

 princely ; and notwithstanding the lapse of many 

 centuries, involving dynastic and constitutional 



changes, his successors, credited with similar attri- 

 butes, continue to this day to enjoy his royal pri- 

 vilege of sitting in judgment and giving their 

 verdict, not upon oath as ordinary individuals, 

 but simply " upon their honours." i3. 



WAS EDWARD VI. PRINCE OF WALES ? 



(2°^ S. Y. 274. 325.) 



The double error into which Mr. Froude has 

 fallen, in supposing Edward VI. to have been born 

 Prince of Wales, is certainly singular in a writer 

 who is usually so well informed, and who desires to 

 be so accurate. When Hume (History of Eng- 

 land, vol. iii. p. 218., edit. 1762) states that "the 

 prince, not six days old, was created Prince of 

 Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester," 

 one is not surprised to find these errors in that 

 inaccurate but accomplished writer ; with Mr. 

 Froude the case is different. Edward VI. was 

 never Prince of Wales. Heylin, in his Ecclesia 

 Restaurata, explains and corrects the error. The 

 passage is as follows : — 



" And secondly he (Edward) was never created Prince 

 of Wales, nor then, nor any time then after following, his 

 Father dying in the midst of the preparations which 

 were intended for the Pomp and Ceremony of that Crea- 

 tion. This truth, confessed by Sir John Haywood in his 

 History of the life and reign of this King, and generally 

 avowed by all our Heralds, who reckon none of the chil- 

 dren of King Henry the Eighth among the Princes of 

 Walesi although all of them successively by vulgar Ap- 

 pellation had been so entituled." 



Sandford, in his Genealogical History of the 

 Kings of England, confirms the statement of 

 Heylin. In Henry VIII.'s will, dated the year 

 before his death, and which is given at length in 

 Rymer's Fcedera (vol. xv. p. 102.), he is styled 

 Prince Edward, and in all the statutes where he 

 is named, it is by the same title. It is, however, 

 even more singular that Blackstone, — who, in his 

 Commentaries (vol. ii. p. 244.), giving the origin 

 and nature of the title, writes as follows, " The 

 heir Apparent to the crown is usually made Prince 

 of Wales and Earl of Chester by special creation 

 and investiture," — should, in the commencement of 

 the same volume, have fallen into an error almost 

 similar to that committed by Mr. Froude. At 

 p. 94., treating of the conquest of Wales by Ed- 

 ward I., the commentator writes : — • 



" Very early in our history we find their princes doing 

 homage to the crown of England, till at length in the 

 reign of Edward I. the line of their ancient princes was 

 abolished, and the king's eldest son became as a matter 

 of course their titular prince." 



It may be here observed, that when the title of 

 Prince of Wales was first created by Edward I., 

 it was not upon the king's eldest son Alphonso 

 that the dignity was conferred, but upon his 

 second son Edward, immediately after his birth, 



