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HTSTOBY OF ENGLAND.

ciup. Whether the consort of a Sovereign has taken the oath of supre-—macy, has signed the declaration against transubstantiation,has communicated according to the ritual of the Church of Eng-land, are very simple issues of fact. But whether the consortof a Sovereign is or is not a Papist is a question about whichpeople may argue for ever. What is a Papist? The word isnot a word of definite signification either in larv or in theology.It is merely a popular nickname, and means very differentthings in different mouths. Is every person a Papist who iswilling to concede to the Bishop of Home a primacy amongChristian prelates? If so, James the First, Charles the First,Laud, Ileylyn, were Papists.* Or is the appellation to be con-fined to persons who hold the ultramontane doctrines touchingthe authority of the Holy See? If so, neither Bossuet norPascal was a Papist.

What again is the legal effect of the words which absolvethe subject from his allegiance? Is it meant that a person ar-raigned for high treason may tender evidence to prove that theSovereign has married a Papist? Would Thistlewood, forexample, have been entitled to an acquittal, if he could haveproved that King George the Fourth had married Mrs. Fitzher-bert, and that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Papist? It is not easy tobelieve that any tribunal would have gone into such a question.Yet to what purpose is it to enact that, in a certain case, thesubject shall be absolved from his allegiance, if the tribunal

* James, in the very treatise in which he tried to prove the Pope to beAntichrist, says: “For myself, if that were yet the question, Iwouldwithall my heart give my consent that the Bishop of Rome should have the firstscat.” There is a remarkable letter on this subject written by James toCharles and Buckingham, when they were in Spain. Hcylyn, speaking ofLaud's negotiation with Rome, says: “So that upon the point the Pope wasto content himself among us in England with a priority instead of asuperiority over other Bishops, and with a primacy instead of a supremacyin those parts of Christendom, which I conceive no man of learning andsobriety would have grudged to grant him.”

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