Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/686

Rh 662 PRECEDENCE by the heralds of different public solemnities and proces sions, such as coronations, royal marriages, state funerals, national thanksgivings, and so on, have always been con sidered to be of great historical and technical value. 1 1. General Precedence of Men. The sovereign; (1) prince of Wales ; (2) younger sons of the sovereign; (3) grandsons of the sovereign; (4) brothers of the sovereign ; (5) uncles of the sovereign ; (6) nephews of the sovereign ; 2 (7) archbishop of Canter bury, primate of all England; (8) lord high chancellor of Great Britain or lord keeper of the great seal ; (9) archbishop of York, primate of England; 3 (10) lord high treasurer of Great Britain ; 4 (11) lord president of the privy council; (12) lord keeper of the privy seal; 5 (13) lord great chamberlain of England; (14) lord high constable of England; (15) earl marshal-; (16) lord high admiral; (17) lord steward of the household; (18) lord 1 Selden, Titles of Honor, part ii. p. 753. - The precedence of the members of the royal family depends on their relationship to the reigning sovereign and not on their relation ship to any of the predecessors of the reigning sovereign. It is pro vided by 31 Hen. VIII. c. 10 that no person, &quot;except only the King s children,&quot; shall have place &quot;at the side of the Cloth of Estate in the Parliament Chamber,&quot; and that &quot;the King s Son, the King s Brother, the King s Nephew, or the King s Brother s or Sister s Sous&quot; shall have place before all prelates, great officers of state, and peers. Lord Chief Justice Coke was of opinion that the king s nephew meant the king s grand.son or nepos (Institutes iv., cap. 77). But, as Mr Justice Blaekstone says, &quot;under the description of the King s children his grandsons are held to be included without having recourse to Sir Edward Coke s interpretation of nephew &quot; (Commentaries, i. ch. 4). Besides, if grandson is to be understood by nephew, the king s grand son would be placed after the king s brother. The prince of Wales is not specifically mentioned in the statute &quot;for the placing of the Lords &quot; ; but, as he is always, whether the son or the grandson of the sovereign, the heir-apparent to the crown, he is ranked next to the sovereign or the queen-consort. With the exception of the prince of Wales, all the male relations of the sovereign are ranked first in the order of their degrees of consanguinity with him or her, and secondly, in the order of their proximity to the succession to the crown ; thus the members of the several groups into which the royal family is divided take precedence according to their own seniority and the seniority of their fathers or mothers, the sons of the sons or brothers of the sovereign being preferred to the sons of the daughters or sisters of the sovereign among the sovereign s grandsons and nephews. 3 By 31 Hen. VIII. c. 10, the king s vicegerent &quot;for good and due ministration of justice in all causes and cases touching the ecclesi astical jurisdiction &quot; is placed immediately before the archbishop of Canterbury. The office of vicegerent or vicar-general was then held by Thomas, Lord Cromwell, afterwards earl of Essex, together with that of lord privy seal, and it was never conferred on any other person. By the Act of Union with Ireland the archbishops of Ireland had place next to the archbishops of England, and if consecrated before and not after the disestablishment of the church in Ireland they retain this position under the Irish Church Act of 1869. At the coronation of William IV. the lord chancellor of Ireland walked next after the lord chancellor of Great Britain and before the lord president of the council and lord privy seal In Ireland, if he is a peer he has preced ence between the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, and if he is not a peer after the archbishop of Dublin. But, except in the House of Lords, the precedence of the lord chancellor of Great Britain or the lord keeper of the great seal is the same whether he is a peer or a commoner. The lord keeper has the same precedence as the lord chancellor under 5 Eliz. c. 18. But the last appointment to the lord keeperhip was that of Sir Robert Henley, afterwards Lord Henley, lord chancellor, and earl of Northington, in 1757, and the office is not likely to be revived. 4 The last lord high treasurer was Charles Talbot, duke of Shrews bury, in 1714 ; since then the office has been executed by commission and as a dignity is practically extinct. None of the commissioners neither the first lord, who is now always the prime minister, nor any of the other or junior lords of the treasury have any official precedence whatever. 6 The lord president of the council and the lord privy seal, if they are peers, are placed by 31 Hen. VIII. c. 10 before all dukes except dukes related to the sovereign in one or other of the degrees of con sanguinity specified in the Act. And, since the holders of these offices have been and are always peers, their pioper precedence if they are commoners has never been determined. chamberlain of the household; 6 (19) dukes; 7 (20) mar- 6 It is provided by 31 Hen. VIII. c. 10 that &quot;the Great Chamber lain, the Constable, the Marshal, the Lord Admiral, the Grand Master or Lord Steward, and the King s Chamberlain shall sit and be placed after the Lord Privy Seal in manner and form following : that is to say, every one of them shall sit and be placed above all other personages being of the same estates or degrees that they shall happen to be of, that is to say the Great Chamberlain first, the Constable next, tbe Marshal third, the Lord Admiral the fourth, the Grand Master or Lord Steward the fifth, and the King s Chamberlain the sixth.&quot; The lord high steward of England is not mentioned in the Act for the placing of the Lords, &quot; because it was intended,&quot; Lord Chief Justice Coke says, &quot; that when the use of him should be necessary he should not endure longer than hacvice&quot; (Inst. iv., 77). But it maybe noted that, when his office is called out of abeyance for coronations or trials by the House of Lords, the lord high steward is the greatest of all the great officers of state in England. The office of lord great chamberlain of England is hereditary, and is held jointly during alternate reigns by the heads of the houses of Willoughby de Eresby and Cholmondeley as representing co-heiresses of the Berties, dukes of Ancaster, who de rived it from an heiress of the De Veres, earls of Oxford, in whose line it had descended from the reign of Henry I. By a private Act, 1 Geo. I. c. 3, passed previous to the advancement of Robert Bertie, marquess of Lindsey, to the dukedom of Ancaster in 1715, it was provided that the tenure of the great chamberlainship should not give him and his heirs precedence of all other dukes except when in the immediate dis charge of the functions of the office ; and Sir Bernard Burke still restricts the precedence of the lord great chamberlain to him &quot; when in actual performance of official duty&quot; (Rook of Precedence, p. 10). But, as Sir Charles Young justly contends, &quot;the limitations of this statute (1 Geo. I. c. 3) failed on the death of the last Duke of Ancaster in 1809 [he should have said &quot;the last duke of Ancaster, who held the great chamberlainship in 1779&quot;], when the precedence of the office of Great Chamberlain fell under the operation of the 31st of Henry VIII.&quot; (Order of Precedence, p. 20). The office of lord high constable of England is called out of abeyance for and pending coronations only. The office of earl marshal is hereditary in the Howards, dukes of Norfolk, premier dukes and, as earls of Arundel, premier earls of England, nuder a grant in special tail male from Charles II. in 1672. The office of lord high admiral, like the office of lord high treasurer, is practically extinct as a dignity. Since the reign of Queen Anne there has been only one lord high admiral, namely, William, duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., for a few months in the Canning administration of 1827. The office is executed by commission, the lords of the admiralty being as destitute of any official precedence as the lords of the treasury, although the first lord of the admiralty is invariably a leading cabinet minister. The lord steward and the lord chamberlain of the household are always peers, and have seldom been under the degree of earls. Ve may here remark that both the Scottish and Irish Acts of Union make no reference to the precedence of the great officers of state of Scotland and Ireland. Not to mention the prince of Wales, who is by birth steward of Scot land, the earl of Shrewsbury is hereditary great seneschal of Ireland, and the earl of Errol is hereditary lord high constable of Scotland ; but what places they are entitled to in the scale of general precedence is altogether doubtful and uncertain. In Ireland the great seneschal ranks after the lord chancellor if he is a commoner, and after the archbishop of Dublin if the lord chancellor is a peer, and in both cases before dukes (&quot;Order of Precedence,&quot; Dublin Gazette, 3d June 1843). Again, on George IV. s visit to Edinburgh in 1821 the lord high constable had place as the first subject in Scotland immediately after the members of the royal family. At every coronation from that of George III. to that of Queen Victoria, the lord high constable of Scotland has been placed next to the earl marshal of England, and, although no rank lias been assigned on these occasions to the hereditary great seneschal of Ireland, the lord high constable of Ireland appointed for the ceremony has been at all or most of them placed next to the lord high constable of Scotland. It is worthy of notice, however, that Sir George Mackenzie, writing when lord advocate of Scotland in the reign of Charles II., says that &quot;the Constable and Marischal take not place as Officers of the Crown but according to their creation as Earls,&quot; and he moreover expresses the opinion that &quot;it seems very strange that these who ride upon the King s right and left hand when he returns from his Parliaments and who guard the Parliament itself, and the Honours, should have no precedency by their offices &quot; (Obser vations, &c., p. 25, in Guillim s Display of Heraldry, p. 461 sq. ; but see also Wood-Douglas, Peerage of Scotland, vol. i. p. 557). 7 Both Sir Charles Young and Sir Bernard Burke place &quot; Dukes of the Blood Royal &quot; before dukes, their eldest sons before marquesses, and their younger sons before marquesses eldest sons. In the &quot;Ancient Tallies of Precedence,&quot; which we have already cited, dukes of the blood royal are always ranked before other dukes, and in most of them their eldest sons and in some of them their younger sons are placed in a corresponding order of precedence. But in this connexion the words of the Act for the placing of the Lords are perfectly plain and unam biguous : &quot;All Dukes not aforementioned,&quot; i.e., all except only such