William, Baron Cowper, Chancellor of England, whom the queen believed in because he was short-sighted like herself, or even more so, had committed to writing a memorandum commencing thus:  “Two birds were subject to Solomon—­a lapwing, the hudbud, who could speak all languages; and an eagle, the simourganka, who covered with the shadow of his wings a caravan of twenty thousand men.  Thus, under another form, Providence,” etc.  The Lord Chancellor proved the fact that the heir to a peerage had been carried off, mutilated, and then restored.  He did not blame James II., who was, after all, the queen’s father.  He even went so far as to justify him.  First, there are ancient monarchical maxims. E senioratu eripimus.  In roturagio cadat.  Secondly, there is a royal right of mutilation.  Chamberlayne asserts the fact.[19] Corpora et bona nostrorum subjectorum nostra sunt, said James I., of glorious and learned memory.  The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out for the good of the kingdom.  Certain princes, too near to the throne, have been conveniently stifled between mattresses, the cause of death being given out as apoplexy.  Now to stifle is worse than to mutilate.  The King of Tunis tore out the eyes of his father, Muley Assem, and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by the emperor.  Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the suppression of a state, etc.  It is legal.  But one law does not destroy another.  “If a drowned man is cast up by the water, and is not dead, it is an act of God readjusting one of the king.  If the heir be found, let the coronet be given back to him.  Thus was it done for Lord Alla, King of Northumberland, who was also a mountebank.  Thus should be done to Gwynplaine, who is also a king, seeing that he is a peer.  The lowness of the occupation which he has been obliged to follow, under constraint of superior power, does not tarnish the blazon:  as in the case of Abdolmumen, who was a king, although he had been a gardener; that of Joseph, who was a saint, although he had been a carpenter; that of Apollo, who was a god, although he had been a shepherd.”

In short, the learned chancellor concluded by advising the reinstatement, in all his estates and dignities, of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, miscalled Gwynplaine, on the sole condition that he should be confronted with the criminal Hardquanonne, and identified by the same.  And on this point the chancellor, as constitutional keeper of the royal conscience, based the royal decision.  The Lord Chancellor added in a postscript that if Hardquanonne refused to answer he should be subjected to the peine forte et dure, until the period called the frodmortell, according to the statute of King Athelstane, which orders the confrontation to take place on the fourth day.  In this there is a certain inconvenience, for if the prisoner dies on the second or third day the confrontation becomes difficult; still the law must be obeyed.  The inconvenience of the law makes part and parcel of it.  In the mind of the Lord Chancellor, however, the recognition of Gwynplaine by Hardquanonne was indubitable.