King and Queen
It is curious to find Lord Buckhurst and Recorder Fleetwood engaged in a conversation on the excellency of the regal dignity of a King, as they rode from London to Windsor in the reign of Elizabeth, (1575,) in the company of the Earl of Leicester, who travelled according to his own pompous notions, with divers knights and noble gentlemen, and a princely cavalcade of attendants. Mr. Recorder, riding between my Lord of Leicester and Lord Buckhurst, as they passed “alonge by Saint James’s walles,” began the debate; when the great lawyer laid down:4
“I doe read that this worde Kinge is a Saxon terme, and doe originallye comme and growe out of this ould Saxon word cyninȝ, which doth signefie a cuninge, a wyse, a virtuous, a polleticque, and a prudent person, fitt to governe as well in peace as in warres; and this word Queene, in the same tongue, is in effect of the same force, referringe the same to the female sex, and therefore it is to be noted that the crowne of England is not alwayes bound especiallye to be governed by the male; but yf there wante heyres males, then ought it to descend to the heyres females, as it appeareth by the judgmente given touchinge the dawghters of Zelophehad (xxvi. 33 Numbers), and as it did in the tyme of the Bryttons descend upon Queen Cordeila, who was queene of this realme before the Incarnation of Christ 805 years, even at that tyme that the good King Ozias did repayer the cittye of Jerusalem, which was in the yeare of the worlde 3358. This Cordeila was dawghter of Kinge Leire, who buylded the auntient cittye of Leicester; yea, and is it a most true and playne matter, that the crowne of England maye descend and come to the female dawghter, where there lacketh heyre male, as it did unto Mawde the Empresse, who was dawghter to Kinge Henrye the First, and by the meane that William, Mary, and Richard, the children of the same King Henry the First, were drowned in the seas by shipwracke, it soe fell out the said Mawde the Empresse became sole heyre, and notwithstandinge an ynterruption made by Kinge Stephen the intruder (for that is his proper addition in the antient chronicles), yett the judgmente fell out for her parte, and she and her posteritye, even to this daye, have justlye and most rightfullye enjoyed the crowne without any enterclayme of anye person that ever hath bine heard of.” To this Leicester replies: “I see that this is a greate and good proofe that the female hath had and enjoyed the crowne of England by just and lawfull tytle,” &c.—Archæologia, xxxvii.