borate, the undoubted right of the people to
interfere with, and limit the succession of their princes, on
extraordinary occasions, while it is the peaceful and sound policy of
the Constitution to keep as near to the hereditary line as the emergency
of the times shall allow.

It was at Edward VI.'s coronation that the ancient form of receiving the
king's oath, prior to the recognition, was first reversed.--See the
Chronological Anecdotes.

Coronations were anciently regarded as a species of parliamentary
meeting between the king and his subjects. Writs of summons issued for
the coronation of Edward II. are preserved in Rymer, which require the
attendance of the people by their "knights, citizens, and burgesses;"
and which differ very slightly from the ordinary parliamentary writs.
Selden observes that at the coronation of Henry I. _clerus Angliae et
populus universus_ were summoned to Westminster, "when divers lawes were
both made and declared[39]."

The coronation oath has undergone some remarkable changes. The oath of
AEthelred II. dated A.D. 978, is extant both in Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
and agrees exactly with that of Henry I. preserved in the Cotton
Library--a proof, as Lord Lyttleton observes, that even at the Conquest
it was thought expedient to respect this fundamental compact between the
prince and people. In the reign of Edward II. it first assumed the
interrogatory form in which it is now administered, and remained in
substance the same until the accession of Charles I. In this reign
Archbishop Laud was accused of making both a serious interpolation, and
an important omission in the coronation oath--a circumstance which, on
his trial, brought its introductory clauses into warm discussion. Our
forefathers had ever been jealous of all encroachments on what some
copies of the old oath call "the lawes and customes of the people," by
"old, rightfull, and devoute kings graunted;" and others "the laws,
customs, and franchises granted to the clergy, and to the people by the
glorious king St. Edward, according and conformable to the laws of God,
the true profession of the Gospel established in this kingdom," &c. They
had even compelled the Conqueror to engage repeatedly that these
ancient statutes of the kingdom should not be violated; a stipulation
renewed expressly in the great charter of his son Henry I. Laud was
charged with adding, after the clause last quoted, the words "agreeable
to the king's prerogative;" a