that his statements are incorrect; it was the exchequer seal which was entrusted to Kilkenny, to be used in place of the great seal, and instead of acting under the queen's direction, he was appointed absolutely and without restriction, to bear and use it until the king's return to England!
His lordship proceeds—"She sat as judge in the Aula Regia, beginning her sittings on the morrow of the Nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary. These sittings were interrupted by the accouchement of the judge." We decline to enter into the knotty question of the constitution and jurisdiction of the Aula Regia, but if Lord Campbell intends his readers to believe that Queen Eleanor sat therein individually as keeper of the great seal, and with any equitable jurisdiction, it must be observed that he is entirely mistaken. He quotes as his authority a Plea roll[1] of the 37th year of Henry the Third; the title of the first rotulet of which is "Pleas before the lady the queen and the council of the lord the king," &c. Just the sort of title that might be expected when the king was out of the realm; those pleas which, had he been present, would be described as "coram Rege," were now recorded as heard before his council, and the queen having been nominated, as already stated, one of the guardians of the kingdom, took her place in the council by virtue of such appointment[2]. Moreover, had his lordship examined this Plea roll, he would have found that after the first rotulet, or skin, the queen's name is not again mentioned—the proceedings are thenceforward described simply as "coram consilio." Her majesty was not present after the sittings on the morrow of the Nativity of the Virgin, that was the 9th of September, and her accouchement did not take place until the 25th of November; so much for the marvellous story of her sittings being interrupted by that interesting event. We confess it seems to us very surprising that Lord Campbell, who must know that in the middle of the reign of Henry the Third, the jurisdiction of the chancellor was already defined and distinguished from the common law, should quote an ordinary Plea roll as a proof of purely imaginary sittings in equity. We need scarcely, after the preceding observations, take the further trouble of contradicting the assertion that after her favourable recovery the "lady keeper" resumed her place in the Aula Regia.
There are so many errors in this little bit of romance by Lord Campbell, that we can do no more than cursorily allude to them. The story of the queen commencing "an unextinguishable feud with the citizens of London," about the dues at Queenhithe, is a monstrous absurdity. Those dues were payable long before Eleanor's time, and the citizens farmed them under
- ↑ Lord Campbell cites this document, wrongly, as Rot. Thes.
- ↑ Henry sailed from Portsmouth on the 6th of August, and all patents and writs subsequent to that date were prepared "coram consilio," and tested by the Queen and Richard earl of Cornwall. "Memorandum quod sexto die Augusti anno regni regis Henrici filii Regis Johannis xxxvijo. transfretavit idem dominus rex usque Wasconiam, et facte fuerunt he subsequentes littere patentes coram consilio ipsius domini regis in Anglia, et continuate usque ad annum ipsius regis xxxviij." Pat. 37 Hen. III. m. 2.
