his children, who had in their turn succeeded to the crown, had been the
offspring of two of those wives; and in the last century James II.,
while Duke of York, had married the daughter of an English gentleman;
and, though it had not been without notorious reluctance that his royal
brother had sanctioned that connection, it was well known that Charles
II. himself had proposed to marry the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. In the
House of Peers, Lord Camden especially objected to the clause annulling
a marriage between persons of full age; and in the Commons, Mr.
Dowdeswell, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
Rockingham's administration, dwelt with especial vigor on the
unreasonableness of the clause which fixed twenty-five as the age before
which no prince or princess could marry without the King's consent.
"Law, positive law," he argued, "and not the arbitrary will of an
individual, should be the only restraint. Men who are by law allowed at
twenty-one[26] to be fit for governing the realm may well be supposed
capable of choosing and governing a wife."[27] Lord Folkestone condemned
with great earnestness the expression in the preamble that the bill was
dictated "by the royal concern for the honor and dignity of the crown,"
as implying a doctrine that an alliance of a subject with a branch of
the royal family is dishonorable to the crown--a doctrine which he
denounced as "an oblique insult" to the whole people, and which, as
such, "the representatives of the people were bound to oppose." And he
also objected to the "vindicatory part," as he termed the clause which
declared those who might assist, or even be present, at a marriage
contracted without the royal permission guilty of felony.[28]

The ministry, however, had a decided majority in both Houses, and the
bill became and remains the law of the land, though fourteen peers,
including one bishop, entered a protest against it on nine different
grounds, one of which condemned it as "an extension of the royal