his prerogative by Act of Parliament, concerning the precedency
of his great officers, and his nobility.'[12]

[11] Titles of Honour, p. 119.

[12] 4th Inst. 362.

Whatever may have been the constitutional notions of the
sixteenth or the seventeenth century, there can be no doubt that
the lawyers of the nineteenth would hold, according to Lord
Coke's latter dictum, that the prerogative of the Crown is
limited and restrained by the 31st Henry VIII., and it is only
worth while to ascertain what it previously was, in so far as
such an enquiry can assist in the solution of the present
question; for the same lawyers would probably be unanimous in
declaring that, except so far as it was expressly limited and
restrained by that statute, the prerogative still remains
undiminished and in all its pristine vigour--that Queen Victoria
possesses all the power which Henry VIII. enjoyed, saving that of
which he was specifically divested by this Act.

The Act 'for placing the Lords' restrains the Queen from granting
any precedence in Parliament _or in the Council_, over any of the
Royal and official personages and others, who have places
assigned to them therein. She may make any man a Privy
Councillor, but she cannot authorise him to sit in a higher place
than that to which he is by law entitled, or above those whose
places are marked out by the statute. If Prince Albert, for
example, was to be made a Privy Councillor, not being a peer, he
would, _of absolute right_, be entitled to no place but that of a
junior Privy Councillor, or to such as a Knight of the Garter
might claim; and all the persons specified in the Act would have
_an absolute right_ to take precedence of him _in Council_. And
it is worth while to consider in what a curious predicament he
might have been placed, if the Bill for his naturalisation had
passed with those amendments as to his precedence which are said
to have been contemplated by the Opposition Lords--that is,
supposing always the rule of precedence established by law to be
carried inflexibly into operation.

If the status of Prince Albert had been fixed immediately after
all the members of the Royal Family, and immediately before the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and if Her Majesty should be hereafter
pleased to make both Prince George of Cambridge and Prince Albert
members of her Most Honourable Privy Council, in what order of
precedence would these princes be obliged to take their
respec