"RITSON'S BIBLIOGRAPHIA SCOTICA, 2 vols. Unpublished.
*** A very Valuable Account of Scottish Poets and Historians, drawn up with great care and indefatigable Research by Ritson. The Work was intended for Publication. These Volumes were purchased at the sale of Ritson's Library by Messrs. Longman and Constable for Forty-three Guineas, and presented to George Chalmers, Esq., who had edited Sir D. Lyndsay's Works for them gratuitously."
My catalogue of Chalmers's library, unfortunately, has not the prices or purchasers' names; and the firm of the Messrs. Evans being no longer in existence, I have no means of ascertaining the present locality of the above-mentioned MSS.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
The Three Estates of the Realm (Vol. iv., p. 115.).
—W. FRASER is quite right in repudiating the cockney error of "Queen, Lords, and Commons" forming the "three estates of the realm." The sovereign is over the "realm;" a word which obviously designates the persons ruled. W. F. however does not exactly hit the mark when he infers, that "the Lords, the Clergy in convocation, and the Commons" are the "three estates." The phrase "assembled in Parliament" has no application to the Convocation; which moreover does not sit at Westminster, and was not exposed to the peril of the gunpowder plot. The three estates of the realm are the three orders (états) into which all natural-born subjects are legally divided: viz. the clergy, the nobility, and the commonalty. They are represented "in Parliament" by the "Lords Spiritual," the "Lords Temporal," and the "Commons" (elected by their fellows). The three estates thus meet their sovereign in the "chamber of Parliament" at the opening of every session; and there it was that the plot was laid for their destruction.
W. F. is no doubt aware that originally they all deliberated also together, and in the presence of the sovereign or his commissioners: and though, for the freedom of discussion, the sovereign now withdraws, and the Commons deliberate in a separate chamber (leaving the chamber of Parliament to be used as "the House of Lords," both Spiritual and Temporal), yet to this day they all reassemble for the formal passing of every act; and the authority of all three is recited by their proper names in the preamble.
The first and second estates are not fused into one, simply because they continue to deliberate and vote together as all three did at the first.
The Convocation of the Clergy was altogether a different institution, which never met either the sovereign or the Parliament: but their order was represented in the latter by the prelates. It is another mistake (therefore) to think the Bishops sit in the House of Lords as Barons.
CANONICUS EBORACENSIS.