under eighteen, or if a female and under
sixteen, should be till such age in the governance of his or her
natural mother, (if approved by the king) and such other counsellors
as his majesty should by will or otherwise appoint: and he accordingly
appointed his sixteen executors to have the government of his son,
Edward VI, and the kingdom; which executors elected the earl of
Hertford protector. The statute 24 Geo. II. c. 24. in case the crown
should descend to any of the children of Frederick late prince of
Wales under the age of eighteen, appoints the princess dowager;--and
that of 5 Geo. III. c. 27. in case of a like descent to any of his
present majesty's children, empowers the king to name either the
queen, the princess dowager, or any descendant of king George II
residing in this kingdom;--to be guardian and regent, till the
successor attains such age, assisted by a council of regency: the
powers of them all being expressly defined and set down in the several
acts.]

III. A THIRD attribute of the king's majesty is his _perpetuity_. The
law ascribes to him, in his political capacity, an absolute
immortality. The king never dies. Henry, Edward, or George may die;
but the king survives them all. For immediately upon the decease of
the reigning prince in his natural capacity, his kingship or imperial
dignity, by act of law, without any _interregnum_ or interval, is
vested at once in his heir; who is, _eo instanti_, king to all intents
and purposes. And so tender is the law of supposing even a possibility
of his death, that his natural dissolution is generally called his
_demise_; _dimissio regis, vel coronae_: an expression which signifies
merely a transfer of property; for, as is observed in Plowden[z], when
we say the demise of the crown, we mean only that in consequence of
the disunion of the king's body natural from his body politic, the
kingdom is transferred or demised to his successor; and so 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 house of Lancaster, this temporary transfer of his dignity was
denominated his _demise_; and all process was held to be discontinued,
as upon a natural death of the king[a].

[Footnote z: Plowd. 177. 234.]

[Footnote a: M. 49 Hen. VI. pl. 1-8.]

WE are next to consider those branches of the royal prerogative, which
invest this our sovereign lord, thus all-perfect and