246 Constitutional History. [cπap.
Ministerial
announce-
ments.
the honour of God and the realm, and he would follow it In
1404 bishop Beaufort, in his address to parliament, compared
the kingdom to the body of a man ; the right side answered to
the church, the left to the baronage, and the other members to
the commons 2. Archbishop Arundel declared the royal will to
the same assembly, that the laws should be kept and guarded,
that equal right and justice should be done as well to poor as
to rich, and that by no letters of privy seal, or other mandates,
should the common law be disturbed, or the people any way
be delayed in the pursuit of justice; that the royal household
should be regulated by the advice of the lords, and the grants
made in parliament should be administered by treasurers
ordained in parliament3. In 1406 bishop LongIey announced
that the king would conform to the precept of the son of Sirach,
and do nothing without advice4. In 1410 bishop Beaufort
quoted the apocryphal answer of Aristotle to Alexander on the
surest defence of states : 1 The supreme security and safeguard
of every kingdom and city is to have the entire and cordial love
of the people, and to keep them in their laws and rights 5∙, The
same sound principle pervades even the most pedantic effusions
of the successive chancellors in the following reigns ; every-
where the welfare of the realm is, conjointly with the glory of
God, recognised as the great end of government ; the king’s
duty is to rule lawfully, the duty of the people to obey honestly ;
the share of the three estates in all deliberations is fully recog-
nised ; the duty as well as the right to counsel, the limitations
and responsibilities, as well as the prerogatives, of royal power.
In all these may be traced not merely a reaction against the
arbitrary government of former reigns, but the existence of a
theory more or less definite, of a permanent character of govern-
ment. Not to multiply however verbal illustrations of what, so
long as they are confined to mere words, may seem mere argu-
ments ad captandwm, it is more interesting to refer to the
language of Sir John Fortescue, the great Lancastrian lawyer,
in whose hands Henry VI seems to have placed the legal
l Rot. Part. iii. 456. 2 ɪb. iɪi. 522. 3 ɪb. ɪii. 529.
4 Ecclus, xxxii, 24 ■ Rot. Parl. iii. 567. 5 Rot. Parl. iii. 622.
xvm.] Fortescue’s Theory of Government.
247
education of his son. Fortescue, in drawing up his account of Iiinstra-
l^ tions to be
the English constitution1, had in his eye by way of contrast, not found ⅛
. к the works
the usurpations of Richard II, but the more legal and the not of SirJohn
, . , f, ., « ∙ 1 . 1 η . η „ Fortescue,
less absolute governments of the continent, especially that of
France ; and, although in some passages it is possible that he
glanced at the arbitrary measures of Edward IV, the general
object of his writing was didactic rather than controversial ;
one moreover of the most interesting of his treatises was written
after his reconciliation with Edward. Taken all together, his
writings represent the view of the English constitution which
was adopted as the Lancastrian programme and on which the
Lancastrian kings had ruled.
365. Fortescue, taking as the basis of his definition the dis- Fortescue’s
tinction drawn by the medieval publicists under the guidance gover∏-
of S. Thomas Aquinas and his followers2, divides governments
into three classes, characterised as dominium regale, dominium
politicum, and dominium reojale et politicums. These institu-
tions differ in origin ; the first was established by the aggres-
sions of individuals, the other two by the institution of the
nations4. Enffland belongs to the third class. The king of Statements
° . . , . to of Fortescne
England is a ζrex politicus5; the maxim of the civil law, as to the
l what has pleased the prince has the force of law, has no place royal power,
in English jurisprudence6 ; the king exists for the sake of the
kingdom, not the kingdom for the sake of the king7; ‘for the
1 The new edition of Fortescue on t The Governance of England/ by
Mr. Plummer, contains a great deal of important illustrative matter, and a
preface and notes which in some points are opposed to my conclusions ex-
pressed in the text.
2 The tract used by Fortescue was the t De Regimine Principum, of
which Thomas Aquinas wrote only the first and part of the second book.
The distinction of governments is drawn in the third book, which was
probably written by Ptolemaeus Lucensis.
3 Fortescue, de Natura Legis Naturae, i. ι6 ; Opp. (ed. Clermont) i. 77 ;
Monarchy, c. i; ib. p. 449, Plummer, p. 109. The division is primarily
between the dominium regale and the dominium politicum, to which
England belongs.
4 De Nat. Leg. Nat. i. 16, quoting Aegidius Romanus de Regimine
Principum ; see Lord Carlingford’s note, p. 360* ; De Laudibus Legum
Angliae, cc. 12, 13, pp. 345, 346.
r' De Nat. Leg. Nat. i. 16, p. 77.
6 lb. i. 28,p.90; De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 9, p. 344 ; c.35,p.365.
7 De Nat. Leg. Nat. i. 25, p. 86 ; ii. 4, quoting the De Regimine, lib,
iii ; Opp, i. 118.