[1] A coloured drawing, done in the first half of the 18th century,
of the magnificent tiara made by the celebrated goldsmith, Caradosso,
for Julius II., is in the Print-Room, British Museum. It was
re-fashioned by Pius VI., but went with other treasure as part of the
indemnity to Napoleon. The splendid emerald at the summit, which was
engraved with the arms of Gregory XIII., was restored by Napoleon and
now adorns another papal tiara at Rome. In this drawing the three
crowns (a feature introduced at the beginning of the 14th century)
are represented by three bands of X-shaped ornament in enamelled
gold.
CROWN DEBT, in English law, a debt due to the crown. By various
statutes--the first dating from the reign of Henry VIII. (1541)--the
crown has priority for its debts before all other creditors. At common
law the crown always had a lien on the lands and goods of debtors by
record, which could be enforced even when they had passed into the hands
of other persons. The difficulty of ascertaining whether lands were
subject to a crown lien or not was often very great, and a remedy was
provided by the Judgments Act 1839, and the Crown Suits Act 1865. Now
by the Land Charges Act 1900, no debt due to the crown operates as a
charge on land until a writ of execution for the purpose of enforcing it
has been registered under the Land Charges Registration and Searches Act
1888. By the Act of 1541 specialty debts were put practically on the
same footing as debts by record. Simple contract debts due to the crown
also become specialty debts, and the rights of the crown are enforced by
a summary process called an _extent_ (see WRIT).
CROWNE, JOHN (d. c. 1703), British dramatist, was a native of Nova
Scotia. His father "Colonel" William Crowne, accompanied the earl of
Arundel on a diplomatic mission to Vienna in 1637, and wrote an account
of his journey. He emigrated to Nova Scotia where he received a grant of
land from Cromwell, but the French took possession of his property, and
the home government did nothing to uphold his rights. When the son came
to England his poverty compelled him to act as gentleman usher to an
Independent lady of quality, and his enemies asserted that his father
had been an Independent minister. He began his literary career with a
romance, _Pandion and Amphigenia, or the History of the coy Lady of
Thessalia_ (1665). In 1671 he produced a romantic play, _Juliana, or the
Princess of Poland_, which has, in spite of its title, no pretensions to
rank as an historical drama. The earl of Rochester procured for him,
apparently with the sole object of annoying Dryden by infringing on his
rights as poet-laureate, a commission to supply a masque for performance
at court. _Calisto_ gained him the favour of Charles II., but Rochester
proved a fickle patron, and his favour was completely alienated by the
success of Crowne's heroic play in two parts, _The Destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian_ (1677). This piece contained a thinly
disguised satire on the Puritan party in the description of the
Pharisees, and about 1683 he produced a distinctly political play, _The
City Politiques_, satirizing the Whig party and containing characters
which were readily recognized as portraits of Titus Oates and others.
This made him many enemies, and he petitioned the king for a small place
that would release him from the necessity of writing for the stage. The
king exacted one more comedy, which should, he suggested, be based on
the _No pued esser_ of Moreto. This had already been unsuccessfully
adapted, as Crowne discovered later, by Sir Thomas St Serfe, but in
Crowne's hands it developed into _Sir Courtly Nice, It Cannot Be_
(1685), a comedy which kept its place as a stock piece for nearly a
century. Unfortunately Charles II. died before the play was completed,
and Crowne was disappointed of his reward. He continued to write plays,
and it is stated that he was still living in 1703, but nothing is known
of his later life.
Crowne was a fertile writer of plays with an historical setting, in
which heroic love was, in the fashion of the French romances, made the
leading motive. The prosaic level of his style saved him as a rule from
the rant to be found in so many contemporary heroic plays, but these
pieces are of no particular interest. He was much more successful in
comedy of the kind that depicts "humours."
_The History of Charles the Eighth of France, or The Invasion of
Naples by the French_ (1672) was dedicated to Rochester. In _Timon_,
generally supposed to have been written by the earl, a line from this
piece--"whilst sporting waves smil'd on the rising sun"--was held up
to ridicule. _The Ambitious Statesman, or The Loyal Favourite_ (1679),
one of the most extravagant of his heroic efforts, deals with the
history of Bernard d'Armagnac, Constable of France, after the battle
of Agincourt; _Thyestes, A Tragedy_ (1681), spares none of the horrors
of the Senecan tragedy, although an incongruous love story is
interpolated; _Darius, King of Persia_ (1688), _Regulus_ (acted 1692,
pr. 1694) and _Caligula_ (1698) complete the list of his tragedies.
_The Country Wit: A Comedy_ (acted 1675, pr. 1693), derived in part
from Moliere's _Le Sicilien, ou l'amour peintre_, is remembered for
the leading character, Sir Mannerly Shallow; _The English Frier; or
The Town Sparks_ (acted 1689, pr. 1690), perhaps suggested by
Moliere's _Tartuffe_, ridicules the court Catholics, and in Father
Finical caricatures Father Petre; and _The Married Beau; or The
Curious Impertinent_ (1694), is based on the _Curioso Impertinente_ in
Don Quixote. He also produced a version of Racine's _Andromaque_, an
adaptation from Shakespeare's Henry VI., and an unsuccessful comedy,
_Justice Busy_.
See _The Dramatic Works of John Crowne_ (4 vols., 1873), edited by
James Maidment and W. H. Logan for the _Dramatists of the
Restoration_.
CROWN LAND, in the United Kingdom, land belonging to the crown, the
hereditary revenues of which were surrendered to parliament in the reign
of George III.
In Anglo-Saxon times the property of the king consisted of (a) his
private estate, (b) the demesne of the crown, comprising palaces, &c.,
and (c) rights over the folkland of the kingdom. By the time of the
Norman Conquest the three became merged into the estate of the crown,
that is, land annexed to the crown, held by the king as king. The king,
also, ceased to hold as a private owner,[1] but he had full power of
disposal by grant of the crown lands, which were increased from time to
time by confiscation, escheat, forfeiture, &c. The history of the crown
lands to the reign of William III. was one of continuous alienation to
favourites. Their wholesale distribution by William III. necessitated
the intervention of parliament, and in the reign of Queen Anne an act
was passed limiting the right of alienation of crown lands to a period
of not more than thirty-one years or three lives. The revenue from the
crown lands was also made to constitute part of the civil list. At the
beginning of his reign George III. surrendered his interest in the crown
lands in return for a fixed "civil list" (q.v.). The control and
management of the crown lands is now regulated by the Crown Lands Act
1829 and various amending acts. Under these acts their management is
entrusted to the commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, who
have certain statutory powers as to leasing, selling, exchanging, &c.
In theory, also, state lands in the British colonies are supposed to be
vested in the crown, and they are called crown lands; actually, however,
the various colonial legislatures have full control over them and power
of disposal. The term "crown-lands," in Austria, is applied to the
various provinces into which that country is divided. (See AUSTRIA.)