Then, on the other hand, medieval thought conceived the nation as a community and pictured it as a body of which the king was the head. It resembled those smaller bodies which it comprised and of which it was in some sort composed. What we should regard as the contrast between State and Corporation was hardly visible. The "commune of the realm" differed rather in size and power than in essence from the commune of a county or the commune of a borough. And as the comitatus or county took visible form in the comitatus or county court, so the realm took visible form in a parliament. "Every one", said Thorpe C.J. in 1365, "is bound to know at once what is done in
Parliament, for Parliament represents the body of the whole realm."

For a time it seems very possible, as we read the Year Books, that so soon as lawyers begin to argue about the nature of corporations or bodies politic and clearly to sever the Borough, for example, from the sum of burgesses, they will definitely grasp and formulate the very sound thought that the realm is "a corporation aggregate of many". In 1522 Fineux C.J. after telling how some corporations are made by the king, others by the pope, others by both king and pope, adds that there are corporations by the common law, for, says he, "the parliament of the king and the lors and the commons are a corporation." What is still lacking is the admission that the corporate
realm, besides being the wielder of public power, may also be the "subject" of private rights, the owner of lands and chattels. And this is the step that we have never yet formally taken.

The portrait that Henry VIII painted of the body politic of which he was the sovereign head will not
be forgotten:

Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme Head and King, having the dignity and royal estate of the Imperial Crown of the same, unto whom a Body Politick, compact of all sorts and degrees of people
and by names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden, and owen to bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience...

It is stately stuff into which old thoughts and new are woven. "The body spiritual" is henceforth to be conceived as "part of the said body politick" which culminates in King Henry. The medieval dualism of Church and State is at length transcended by the majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome. The frontispiece of the Leviathan is already before our eyes. But, as for Hobbes, so also for King Henry, the personality of the corporate body is concentrated in and absorbed by the personality of its monarchical head. His reign was not the time when the king's lands could be severed from the nation's lands, the king's wealth from the common wealth, or even the king's
power from the power of the State. The idea of a corporation sole which was being prepared in the ecclesiastical sphere might do good service here. Were not all Englishmen incorporated in King Henry? Were not his acts and deeds the acts and deeds of that body politic which was both Realm and Church?

A certain amount of disputation there was sure to be over land acquired by the king in divers ways. Edward VI, not being yet of the age of twenty-one years, purported to alienate land which formed part of the duchy of Lancaster. Did this act fall within the doctrine that the king can convey while he is an infant? Land had been conveyed to Henry VII "and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten". Did this give him an estate tail or a fee simple conditional? Could the head of a body politic beget heirs? A few cases of this kind came before the Court soon after the middle of the sixteenth century. In Plowden's reports of these cases we may find much curious argumentation about the king's two "bodies", and I do not know where to look in the whole series of our law
books for so marvellous a display of metaphysical -- or we might say metaphysiological -- nonsense.

Whether this sort of talk was really new about the year 1550, or whether it had gone unreported until Plowden arose, it were not easy to say; but the Year Books have not prepared us for it. Two sentences may be enough to illustrate what I mean:
So that he [the king] has a body natural adorned and invested with the estate and dignity royal, and he has not a body natural distinct and divided by itself from the office and dignity royal, but a body natural and a body politic together indivisible, and these two bodies are incorporated in one person and make one body and not divers, that is, the body corporate in the body natural et e contra the body natural in the body corporate. So that the body natural by the conjunction of the body politic to it (which body politic contains the office, government and majesty royal) is magnified and by the said consolidation hath in it the body politic.

"Which faith", we are inclined to add, "except every man keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." However, a gleam of light seems sometimes to penetrate the darkness. The thought that in one of his two capacities the king is only the "head" of a corporation has not been wholly suppressed.

The king has two capacities, for he has two bodies, the one whereof is a body natural... the other is a body politic, and the members thereof are his subjects, and he and his subjects together compose
the corporation, as Southcote said, and he is incorporated with them and they with him, and he is
the head and they are the members, and he has the sole government of them.
Our Taxes
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