with speculations as to the immediate changes which his
death would bring about, and with discussions and disputations as to the
proper arrangements and ceremonials to accompany and to follow his
passing away from this world. Something of the same kind must have
happened in the case of any Windsor shopkeeper whose family and friends
were in hourly expectation of his death, and it is only when such
discussions and arrangements come to be recorded as a part of the history
of a reign that we are likely to feel impressed by the difference between
the prosaic, practical details of the business of this world and the
sacred solemnity of the event that is supposed already to cast its shadow
before.

[Sidenote: 1837--Death of William the Fourth]

There appears to have been some dispute between the authorities of Church
and State as to the offering up of prayers in the churches for the
recovery of the King. William was anxious that the prayers should be
offered at once, and the Privy Council assembled to make the order; but
the Bishop of London raised an objection, not to the offering of the
prayers, but to the suggestion that the prayers were to be offered in
obedience to an order coming from the Lords in Council. The Bishop
maintained that the Lords had no power to make any such order. In the
discussion which took place it appears that some eminent lawyers were of
opinion that even the King himself had no power to order the use of any
particular prayers, or, at all events, that even if he had any such power
it was in virtue of his position as head of the Church and not as head of
the State. This was indeed to raise what the late Baron Bramwell once
humorously described as "a most delightful point of law." The difficulty
appears to have been got over by a sort of compromise, the Archbishop of
Canterbury undertaking to order, on his own authority, that prayers
should be offered up in all churches for the King's recovery, and the
order was no {293} doubt dutifully obeyed. To complete the satirical
humor of the situation King William ought actually to have died while the
dispute was still going on as to the precise authority by which prayers
were to be offered up for his recovery, but some sort of effective
arrangement was made during the monarch's few remaining hours of life,
and the appeal on his behalf was duly made.

On June 19 the King was found to be falling deeper and deeper into
weakness, which seemed to put all c