Note (31) — Chapter III

Edward the First was the earliest King whose reign is dated from a time earlier than his coronation. He was out of the kingdom at his father’s death, and his right was acknowledged without opposition. But even in this case there was an interregnum. The regnal years of Edward the First are not reckoned from the day of his father’s death, but from the day of his funeral, when Edward was acknowledged King, and when the prelates and nobles swore allegiance to him. See the account in the Worcester Annals, Annales Monastici, iv. 462, and the documents in Rymer, i. part ii. 497. See also the remarks of Allen, 46, 47. The doctrine that there can be no interregnum seems to have been put into shape to please James the First, and it was of course altogether upset by the great vote of 1688. Now of course there is no interregnum; not indeed from any mysterious prerogative of the Crown, but simply because the Act of Settlement has entailed the Crown in a particular way.