Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/265

Ch. 7. III.&ensp; attribute of the king’s majety is his perpetuity. The law acribes to him, in his political capacity, an abolute immortality. The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die; but the king urvives them all. For immediately upon the deceae of the reigning prince in his natural capacity, his kinghip or imperial dignity, by act of law, without any interregnum or interval, is veted at once in his heir; who is, , king to all intents and purpoes. And o tender is the law of uppoing even a poibility of his death, that his natural diolution is generally called his demie; : an expreion which ignifies merely a transfer of property; for, as is oberved in Plowden, when we ay the demie of the crown, we mean only that in conequence of the diunion of the king’s body natural from his body politic, the kingdom is transferred or demied to his ucceor; and o the royal dignity remains perpetual. Thus too, when Edward the fourth, in the tenth year of his reign, was driven from his throne for a few months by the houe of Lancater, this temporary transfer of his dignity was denominated his demie; and all proces was held to be dicontinued, as upon a natural death of the king.

Rh