_The Three Estates of the Realm_ (Vol. iv., p. 115.).--W. FRASER is
quite right in repudiating the _cockney_ error of "Queen, Lords, and
Commons" forming the "three estates of the realm." The sovereign is
_over_ the "realm;" a word which obviously designates the persons
_ruled_. W. F. however does not exactly hit the mark when he infers,
that "the Lords, the Clergy _in convocation_, and the Commons" are the
"three estates." The phrase "assembled in Parliament" has no application
to the Convocation; which moreover does not sit at Westminster, and was
not exposed to the peril of the gunpowder plot. The three estates of the
realm are the three orders (_états_) into which all natural-born
subjects are legally divided: viz. the _clergy_, the _nobility_, and the
_commonalty_. They are represented "in Parliament" by the "Lords
Spiritual," the "Lords Temporal," and the "Commons" (elected by their
fellows). The three estates thus meet their sovereign in the "chamber of
Parliament" at the opening of every session; and there it was that the
plot was laid for their destruction.
W. F. is no doubt aware that originally they all _deliberated_ also
together, and in the presence of the sovereign or his commissioners: and
though, for the freedom of discussion, the sovereign now withdraws, and
the Commons deliberate in a separate chamber (leaving the chamber of
Parliament to be used as "the House of Lords," both Spiritual and
Temporal), yet to this day they all reassemble for the formal _passing_
of every act; and the authority of all three is recited by their proper
names in the preamble.
The first and second estates are not fused into one, simply because they
continue to deliberate and vote together as all three did at the first.
The _Convocation_ of the Clergy was altogether a different institution,
which never met either the sovereign or the Parliament: but their order
was _represented_ in the latter by the prelates. It is another mistake
(therefore) to think the Bishops sit in the House of Lords as _Barons_.