If the status of Prince Albert had been fixed immediately after all the members of the Royal Family, and immediately before the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if Her Majesty should be hereafter pleased to make both Prince George of Cambridge and Prince Albert members of her Most Honourable Privy Council, in what order of precedence would these princes be obliged to take their respective seats at the board? In order clearly to comprehend this point, it is necessary to explain the ancient usage as to Royal precedence, and the manner in which it has been affected by the 31st Henry VIII. The Royal Family are to be considered in two lights, according to the different senses in which the term Royal Family is used—the larger sense includes all who may possibly inherit the Crown; the confined sense, those within a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning Prince, and to whom the law pays an extraordinary respect; but, after that degree is past, they fall into the rank of ordinary subjects. The younger sons of the king, and other branches of the Royal Family, not in the immediate line of succession, were only so far regarded by the ancient law as to give them a certain degree of precedence over peers and other officers, ecclesiastical and temporal. This was done by the 31st of Henry VIII., which assigns places in the Parliament Chamber and Council to the king’s sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews, &c.—‘therefore, after these degrees are past, peers, or others of the blood royal, are entitled to no place or precedence, except what belongs to them by their personal rank or dignity, which made Sir Edward Walker complain that, by the creation of Prince Rupert to be Duke of Cumberland, and of the Earl of Lennox to be duke of that name, previous to the creation of James to be Duke of York, it might happen that their grandsons would have precedence of the grandsons of the Duke of York.’[13]
[13] Blackstone, vol. i. p. 226.
Prince George of Cambridge, then, being neither son, brother, uncle, or nephew to the Queen, and having no personal dignity, is not entitled to any precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the great officers of state; the 31st Henry VIII. would place him below them all; but the 3rd Victoria (supposing such an Act to have passed) would have placed Prince Albert below Prince George, but above the Archbishop, who is himself above Prince George, thus giving to the Master of the Ceremonies the solution of a somewhat difficult problem of precedence—namely, how to place A above B, B above C, and C above A. This reductio ad absurdum at least proves that the amended Act would not only not have settled the question of precedence satisfactorily, but would not have settled it at all.
It may seem surprising or paradoxical to assert, and many may with difficulty believe, that Prince George of Cambridge is entitled to no precedence of his own, inseparable from his royal birth, but such, nevertheless, is undoubtedly the fact. By law, he can only take royal rank as the son, brother, uncle, or nephew, of the reigning sovereign, none of which he is, and he derives none whatever from having been nephew of William IV. and George IV., and grandson of George III. The princes of the Blood Royal have, as to precedence, a moveable and not a fixed status, constantly shifting, with their greater or less propinquity to the actual sovereign; and in the event of Prince George’s succession to his father’s dukedom, he would only be entitled to a place in Parliament and in the Council, according to the ancienty of his peerage.
The practice, however, does not wait upon the right, and is regulated by the universal sense and feeling of the respect and deference which is due to the Blood Royal of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury does not take a legal opinion or pore over the 31st of Henry VIII. to discover whether he has a right to jostle for that precedence with the cousin, which he knows he is bound to concede to the uncle, of the Queen; but he yields it as a matter of course, and so uniform and unquestionable is the custom, that in all probability neither the Prince nor the Prelate are conscious that it is in the slightest degree at variance with the right.
The obscurity which involves the question of precedence, and the prevailing doubts as to the extent of the Royal prerogative, proceed, in a great measure, from the intermixture of law and custom, by which the practice is regulated and enforced. The table of precedence, the authority of which is recognised for all social and ceremonial purposes, rests upon statutory enactments, ancient usages, and the king’s letters patent; usage creeping in to disarrange the order, and break the links of the chain forged by the law; for, while the 31st of Henry VIII. places earls after marquises, custom interposes and postpones the former to the eldest sons of dukes (and so of Marquis’s eldest sons and viscounts), though these are only commoners in the eye of the law. Now, as no custom (unless expressly saved) can prevail against the force of a statute, this renders it still more clear, that nothing was intended by the 31st Henry VIII. but ‘the placing the Lords’ in Parliament,[14] and that the question of general precedence (with all the prerogatives of the Crown thereunto appertaining) was left untouched by it.[15] In point of fact, the royal prerogative always has been, and still continually is exercised, in violation of the order of the established table; for when the King, by his Royal warrant, gives to one of his subjects, having neither rank nor dignity, the place and precedence of a duke’s or an earl’s son, the individual thus elevated supersedes all those (below that rank) whose place and precedence is determined either by law or custom.
[14] Lord Herbert, in his Life of Henry VIII, says, in allusion to this statute, ‘it was declared also how the Lords in Parliament should be placed,’ p. 218.
[15] Lord Coke clearly distinguishes between precedence in Parliament and Council and general precedence:—Thus far for avoiding contention about precedency in Parliament, Star Chamber, and all other assemblies, Council, &c. Now, they that desire to know the places and precedency of the nobility and subjects of the realm, as well men as women, and of their children (which we have added the rather, for that the contention about precedency between persons of that sex is even fiery, furious, and sometimes fatal), we will refer you to a record of great authority in the reign of Henry VII., entitled.’—4th Inst. 363.
The result, then, appears to be that, in the olden time, the king had unlimited power in matters of honour and precedence, and could confer whatever dignity or pre-eminence he thought fit, upon any of his subjects. That this power has been expressly restrained, quoad the Parliament Chamber and the Council, but exists unfettered in all other respects.
In Parliament (should Prince Albert be created a peer), he would only be entitled to a seat at the bottom of the degree to which he might belong, and he would be expressly prohibited from sitting nearer to the throne. In the Privy Council likewise (if made a Privy Councillor) he would be entitled to no especial place, but everywhere else, at ceremonials of every description, at royal marriages, christenings or funerals, at banquets, processions, and courtly receptions, at installations and investitures, at all religious, civil, or military celebrations, upon all occasions, formal or social, public or private, the Queen may grant to her husband an indisputable precedence and pre-eminence over every other subject in the realm. It will probably be less difficult to obtain a concurrence of opinion as to the extent of the Queen’s constitutional right in granting precedence, than as to the manner in which it would be morally fit, and just to others, that this right should be exercised.