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Allegiance may be tendered to all persons above the age of twelve years, whether natives, denizens, or aliens, either in the court-leet of the manor or in the Sheriff's tourn, which is the Court-leet of the county. But besides these express engagements, the law also holds that there is an implied, original, and virtual allegiance owing from every subject to his sovereign, antecedently to any express promise, although the subject never swore any faith or allegiance in form.
For as the king, by the very descent of the crown, is fully invested with all the rights and bound to all the duties of sovereignty, before his coronation; so the subject is bound to his prince by intrinsic allegiance, before the superinduction of those outward bonds of both homage and fealty, which were only instituted to remind the subject of this his previous duty, and for the better securing its performance.
The formal profession, therefore, or oath of subjection, is nothing more than a declaration in words of what was before implied in law, which occasions Sir Edward Coke very justly to observe that "all subjects are bounden to their allegiance equally as if they had taken the Oath; because it is written by the finger of the Law in their hearts, and the taking of the corporal oath is but an outward declaration of the same."
The sanction of an oath, it is true, in case of violation of duty, makes the guilt...
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