The prince of Wales has a separate household, as also has the princess of Wales. Act 33, Geo. III. c. 125 makes provision to prevent the accumulation of debt by any future heir-apparent to the crown, and enacts that as soon as he shall have a separate estab lishment, the treasurer or principal officer shall make a plan of such establishment in distinct departments and classes, with the salaries and payments of each class, and of each individual officer; and the treasurer is made responsible for the punctuality of all payments, and required to submit his accounts to the lords of the treasury. The statute of treasons. 25 Edw. III. makes it treason to compass the death of the prince of 'Wales, or violate the chastity of his consort.
By a statute of the order of the garter, of date 1805, the prince of Wales becomes a knight of the Garter as soon as he receives that title.
In 1788, on the illness of George III., it was made a question whether the prince of Wales was not, as heir-apparent, entitled to the regency; the recovery of the king pre vented the necessity for a decision, but it is now held that he has no such right.
The arms of the prince of Wales are those of the sovereign, differenced by a label of three points argent, and the present prince of Wales bears en surtout the escutcheon of the house of Saxony. The supporters and crest are the same as those of royalty. The
ancient coronet of the princes of Wales was a circle of gold set rotund with four crosses patee, and as many alternately. Since the restoration, it has been closed with one arch only, adorned with pearls, surmounted by a mound and cross, and fur nished with a cap trimmed with ermine, like that of the sovereign. The prince of Wales has further a distinguishing badge. composed of a plume of three white ostrich feathers, encircled by an ancient coronet of a prince of :Wales, and accompanied by the motto lch dies " (1 serve). This device is said by a tradition, on which considerable doubts have been thrown, to have been first assumed by the Black prince after the battle of CrAcy, in 1346, when he took such a plume from John, king of Bohemia, whom he had slain with his own hand. The motto has been supposed to allude to the fact that the king of Bohemia served, or was stipendiary to the French king iu his wars.