After the Restoration, under the government of an easy prince, who had indeed little disposition to give, but who could not bear to refuse, many noble private fortunes were carved out of the property of the Crown.  Some of the persons who were thus enriched, Albemarle, for example, Sandwich and Clarendon, might be thought to have fairly earned their master’s favour by their services.  Others had merely amused his leisure or pandered to his vices.  His mistresses were munificently rewarded.  Estates sufficient to support the highest rank in the peerage were distributed among his illegitimate children.  That these grants, however prodigal, were strictly legal, was tacitly admitted by the Estates of the Realm, when, in 1689, they recounted and condemned the unconstitutional acts of the kings of the House of Stuart.  Neither in the Declaration of Right nor in the Bill of Rights is there a word on the subject.  William, therefore, thought himself at liberty to give away his hereditary domains as freely as his predecessors had given away theirs.  There was much murmuring at the profusion with which he rewarded his Dutch favourites; and we have seen that, on one occasion in the year 1696, the House of Commons interfered for the purpose of restraining his liberality.  An address was presented requesting him not to grant to Portland an extensive territory in North Wales.  But it is to be observed that, though in this address a strong opinion was expressed that the grant would be mischievous, the Commons did not deny, and must therefore be considered as having admitted, that it would be perfectly legal.  The King, however, yielded; and Portland was forced to content himself with ten or twelve manors scattered over various counties from Cumberland to Sussex.

It seems, therefore, clear that our princes were, by the law of the land, competent to do what they would with their hereditary estates.  It is perfectly true that the law was defective, and that the profusion with which mansions, abbeys, chaces, warrens, beds of ore, whole streets, whole market towns, had been bestowed on courtiers was greatly to be lamented.  Nothing could have been more proper than to pass a prospective statute tying up in strict entail the little which still remained of the Crown property.  But to annul by a retrospective statute patents, which in Westminster Hall were held to be legally valid, would have been simply robbery.  Such robbery must necessarily have made all property insecure; and a statesman must be short-sighted indeed who imagines that what makes property insecure can really make society prosperous.