THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE

A printed tract entitled An Essay of a King, with an explanation what manner of persons those should be that are to execute the power or ordinance of the Kings Prerogative, was published in an anonymous, miscellaneous collection of essays in 1642. It was published without an editor or an acknowledgment of the source. A different version of the same work was published in 1648 as part of The Remaines of the Right Honorable Francis Lord Verulam. This version, in contrast to the former one, contained drastic stylistic changes in addition to minor material differences. In the nineteenth century, James Spedding reprinted the 1642 edition of this tract as a ‘Spurious Essay’, an addendum to his scholarly edition of the papers of Sir Francis Bacon. Both Spedding and Dr Rawley were convinced, however, that Bacon had not composed the tract. But ‘Baconians’ could not be so easily denied. In 1939, Professor Wormuth attributed this work–without–evidence to Bacon, and many scholars since then have maintained that unwarranted attribution.

A manuscript tract on the royal prerogative in the Harvard Law Library appears to be an earlier copy of the two essays published in 1642 and 1648. Its full title is ‘A Coppie of wrytten discourse by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere concerning the Royall Prerogatiue, and what manner of persones that should be and are to execute the power and ordinacion of the Kinges Prerogatiue’.