We must needs
inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested
with that right. The law itself has already been set forth.
But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught
belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence."
And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent
argument in such matters.
But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail?
A reason for that, ye lawyers!
In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pin-money, an old
King's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth:
"Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied
with ye whalebone." Now this was written at a time when the black
limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used
in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail;
it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer
like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail?
An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers--
the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations,
and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue.
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