Note b — Chapter VIII · (continued 3)

A notion is entertained by many people, and not without the authority of some very respectable names, that the king is one of the three estates of the realm, the lords spiritual and temporal forming together the second, as the commons in parliament do the third. This is contradicted by the general tenor of our ancient records and law-books; and indeed the analogy of other governments ought to have the greatest weight, even if more reason for doubt appeared upon the face of our own authorities. But the instances where the three estates are declared or implied to be the nobility, clergy, and commons, or at least their representatives in parliament, are too numerous for insertion. This land standeth, says the Chancellor Stillington, in 7th Edward IV., by three states, and above that one principal, that is to wit, lords spiritual, lords temporal, and commons, and over that, state royal, as our sovereign lord the king. Rot. Parl. vol. v. p. 622. Thus, too, it is declared that the treaty of Staples in 1492 was to be confirmed per tres status regni Angliæ ritè et debitè convocatos, videlicet per prelatos et clerum, nobiles et communitates ejusdem regni. Rymer, t. xii. p. 508.

I will not, however, suppress one passage, and the only instance that has occurred in my reading, where the king does appear to have been reckoned among the three estates. The commons say, in the 2nd of Henry IV., that the states of the realm may be compared to a trinity, that is, the king, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons. Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 459. In this expression, however, the sense shows that by estates of the realm they meant members, or necessary parts, of the parliament.

Whitelocke, on the Parliamentary Writ, vol. ii. p. 43, argues at length, that the three estates are king, lords, and commons, which seems to have been a current doctrine among the popular lawyers of the seventeenth century. His reasoning is chiefly grounded on the baronial tenure of bishops, the validity of acts passed against their consent, and other arguments of the same kind; which might go to prove that there are only at present two estates, but can never turn the king into one.

The source of this error is an inattention to the primary sense of the word estate (status), which means an order or condition into which men are classed by the institutions of society. It is only in a secondary, or rather an elliptical application, that it can be referred to their representatives in parliament or national councils. The lords temporal, indeed, of England are identical with the estate of the nobility; but the house of commons is not, strictly speaking, the estate of commonalty, to which its members belong, and from which they are deputed. So the whole body of the clergy are properly speaking one of the estates, and are described as such in the older authorities, 21 Ric. II. Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 348, though latterly the lords spiritual in parliament acquired, with less correctness, that appellation. Hody on Convocations, p. 426. The bishops, indeed, may be said, constructively, to represent the whole of the clergy, with whose grievances they are supposed to be best acquainted, and whose rights it is their peculiar duty to defend. And I do not find that the inferior clergy had any other representation in the cortes of Castile and Aragon, where the ecclesiastical order was always counted among the estates of the realm.