_King's Prerogative._--A writer in the _Edinburgh Review_, vol. lxxiv. p.
77., asserts, on the authority of Blackstone (but he does not refer to the
volume and page of the _Commentaries_, and I have in vain sought for the
passages), that it is to _this day_ a branch of the king's prerogative, at
the death of _every bishop_, to have his kennel of hounds, or a
compensation in lieu of it. Does the writer mean, and is it the fact, that
if a bishop die without having a kennel of hounds, his executors are to pay
the king a compensation in lieu thereof? And if it is, what is the amount
of that compensation? Is it merely nominal? I can understand the king
claiming a bishop's kennel of hounds or compensation in feudal times, when
bishops were hunters (vide Raine's _Auckland Castle_, a work of great
merit, and abounding with much curious information); but to say, to _this
day_ it is a branch of the king's prerogative, is an insult alike to our
bishops and to religious practices in the nineteenth century. Of hunting
bishops in feudal times, I beg to refer your readers, in addition to Mr.
Raine's work, to an article in the fifty-eighth volume of the _Quarterly
Review_, p. 433., for an extract from a letter of Peter of Blois to Walter,
Bishop of Rochester, who at the age of eighty was a great hunter. Peter was
shocked at his lordship's indulgence in so unclerical a sport. It is
obvious neither Peter nor the Pope could have heard of the hunting Bishops
of Durham.