will be still farther elucidated, and made clear beyond all difpute, from a fhort hiftorical view of the fucceffions to the crown of England, the doctrines of our ancient lawyers, and the feveral acts of parliament that have from time to time been made, to create, to declare, to confirm, to limit, or to bar, the hereditary title to the throne. And in the purfuit of this inquiry we shall find, that, from the days of Egbert, the first sole monarch of this kingdom, even to the prefent, the four cardinal maxims above mentioned have ever been held the constitutional canons of fuccession. It is true, this fucceffion, through fraud, or force, or fometimes through neceffity, when in hoftile times the crown descended on a minor or the like, has been very frequently fufpended; but has generally at last returned back into the old hereditary channel, though fometimes a very confiderable period has intervened. And, even in those inftances where the fucceffion has been violated, the crown has ever been looked upon as hereditary in the wearer of it. Of which the ufurpers themselves were fo sensible, that they, for the most part, endeavoured to vamp up fome feeble fhew of a title by defcent, in order to amufe the people, while they gained the poffeffion of the kingdom. And, when poffeffion was once gained, they confidered it as the purchase or acquifition of a new state of inheritance, and tranfmitted or endeavoured to transmit it to their own pofterity, by a kind of hereditary right of ufurpation.

King Egbert, about the year 800, found himself in poffeffion of the throne of the weft Saxons, by a long and undisturbed descent from his ancestors of above three hundred years. How his ancestors acquired their title, whether by force, by fraud, by contract, or by election, it matters not much to inquire; and is, indeed, a point of fuch high antiquity, as muft render all inquiries at best but plaufible gueffes. His right must be fuppofed indifputably good, because we know no better. The other kingdoms of the heptarchy he acquired, fome by confent, but most by a voluntary fubmiffion. And it is an established maxim in civil polity, and the law of nations, that when one country is united to another in such a

manner

Book I. manner, as that one keeps its government and ftates, and the other lofes them, the latter entirely affimilates with, or is melted down in the former, and must adopt its laws and customs c. And in pursuance of this maxim there hath ever been, fince the union of the heptarchy in King Egbert, a general acquiefcence under the hereditary monarchy of the weft Saxons, through all the united kingdoms.

From Egbert to the death of Edmund Ironfide, a period of above two hundred years, the crown descended regularly, through a fucceffion of fifteen princes, without any deviation or interruption: Save only that the fons of King Ethelwolf fucceeded to each other in the kingdom, without regard to the children of the elder branches, according to the rule of fucceffion prescribed by their father, and confirmed by the wittena gemote, in the heat of the Danish invasions; and also that King Edred, the uncle of Edwy, mounted the throne for about nine years, in the right of his nephew a minor, the times being very troublesome and dangerous. But this was with a view to preferve, and not to destroy, the fucceffion; and accordingly Edwy fucceeded him.

King Edmund Ironfide was obliged, by the hoftile irruption of the Danes, at firft to divide his kingdom with Canute, King of Denmark; and Canute, after his death, feized the whole of it, Edmund's fons being driven into foreign countries. Here the fucceffion was fufpended by actual force, and a new family introduced upon the throne: In whom, however, this new acquired throne continued hereditary for three reigns; when, upon the death of Hardiknute, the ancient Saxon line was restored in the perfon of Edward the Confeffor.

He was not, indeed, the true heir to the crown, being the younger brother of King Edmund Ironfide, who had a fon Edward, firnamed (from his exile) the Outlaw, ftill living. But this fon was then in Hungary; and, the English having juft fhaken off the Danish yoke, it was necessary that fomebody on the spot fhould mount the throne; and the Confeffor was the next of

c Puff. L. of N. and N. b. S. c. 12. §. 6.

the

the royal line then in England. On his deceafe without iffue, Harold II ufurped the throne; and almost at the fame instant came on the Norman invasion: The right to the crown being all the time in Edgar, firnamed Atheling (which fignifies in the Saxon language ilLuftrious, or of royal blood) who was the fon of Ed ward the Outlaw, and grandfon of Edmund Ironfide; or, as Mathew Paris d well expreffes the fense of our old constitution "Edmundus autem latusferreum, rex "naturalis de ftirpe regum, genuit Edwardum; et Ed"wardus genuit Edgarum, cui de jure debebatur regnum "Anglorum."

William the Norman claimed the crown by virtue of a pretended grant from King Edward the Confeffor; a grant which, if real, was in itself utterly invalid: Be cause it was made, as Harold well obferved in his reply to William's demande," abfque generali fenatus, et po puli conventu et edicto;" which also very plainly implies, that it then was generally understood, that the king, with consent of the general council, might difpofe of the crown, and change the line of fucceffion. William's title, however, was altogether as good as Harold's, he being a mere private fubject, and an utter ftranger to the royal blood. Edgar Atheling's undoubted right was overwhelmed by the violence of the times; though fre quently afferted by the English nobility after the con+ queft, till fuch time as he died without iffue: But all their attempts proved unsuccessful, and only ferved the more firmly to establish the crown in the family which had newly acquired it.

This conqueft then by William of Normandy was, like that of Canute before, a forcible transfer of the crown of England into a new family: But, the crown being fo transferred, all the inherent properties of the crown were with it transferred alfo. For the victory obtained at Haftings not being fa victory over the nation collectively, but only over the perfon of Harold, the only right that the Conqueror could pretend to acquire thereby, was the right to poffefs the crown of England, not to alter the nature of the government. And,

d A. D. 1066.

e William of Malmsb. 1. 3. f Hale, Hift. C. L. 5. Seld. review of tithes, c. 8.

And, therefore, as the English law ftill remained in force, he muft neceffarily take the crown fubject to thofe laws, and with all its inherent properties; the first and principal of which was its defcendibility. Here, then, we must drop our race of Saxon kings, at least for a while, and derive our descents from William the Conqueror as from a new ftock, who acquired by right of war (fuch as it is, yet ftill the dernier refort of kings) a ftrong and undifputed title to the inheritable crown of England.

Accordingly it defcended from him to his fons William II and Henry I. Robert, it must be owned, his eldest fon, was kept out of poffeffion by the arts and violence of his brethren; who perhaps might proceed upon a notion, which prevailed for fome time in the law of defcents (though never adopted as the rule of publick fucceffion 8) that when the eldest son was already provided for (as Robert was conftituted Duke of Normandy by his father's will) in fuch a cafe the next brother was entitled to enjoy the reft of their father's inheritance. But, as he died without iffue, Henry at laft had a good title to the throne, whatever he might have at first.

Stephen of Blois, who fucceeded him, was, indeed, the grandson of the Conqueror, by Adelicia his daughter, and claimed the throne by a feeble kind of hereditary right: Not as being the nearest of the male line but as the nearest male of the blood royal, excepting his elder brother Theobald; who was Earl of Blois, and, therefore, feems to have waved, as he certainly never infifted on, so troublesome and precarious a claim. The real right was in the Emprefs Matilda or Maud, the daughter of Henry I; the rule of fucceffion being (where women are admitted at all) that the daughter of a fon fhall be preferred to the son of a daughter. So that Stephen was little better than a mere ufurper; and, therefore, he rather chose to rely on a title by election ", while

g See Lord Lyttleton's life of Henry II. Vol. I. page 467. h" Ego Stephanus Dei gratia affenfu c'eri et populi in regem Anglorum electus, &c." (Cart. A. D. 1136. Ric. de. Haguftaid. 314. Hearne ad Guil. Neubr. 711.)

while the Emprefs Maud did not fail to affert her hereditary right by the fword: Which difpute was attend. ed with various fuccefs, and ended at laft in the compromife made at Wallingford, that Stephen fhould keep the crown, but that Henry the fon of Maud fhould fucceed him; as he afterwards accordingly did.

Henry, the fecond of that name, was (next after his mother Matilda) the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror; but he had also another connexion in blood, which endeared him ftill farther to the English. He was lineally defcended from Edmund Ironfide, the last of the Saxon race of hereditary kings. For Edward the Outlaw, the fon of Edmund Ironfide, had (befides Edgar Atheling, who died without iffue) a daughter Margaret, who was married to Malcolm king of Scotland; and in her the Saxon hereditary right refided. By Malcolm fhe had feveral children, and among the reft Matilda, the wife of Henry I, who by him had the Empress Maud, the mother of Henry II. Upon which account the Saxon line is in our hiftories frequently faid to have been reftored in his perfon: Though in reality that right fubfifted in the fons of Malcolm by Queen Margaret; King Henry's best title being as heir to the Conqueror.

From Henry II, the crown defcended to his eldest fon Richard I, who dying childlefs, the right vested in his nephew Arthur, the son of Geoffrey, his next brother: But John, the youngest fon of King Henry, feized the throne; claiming, as appears from his charter, the crown by hereditary right; that is to fay, he was next of kin to the deceased king, being his furviving brother Whereas Arthur was removed one degree farther, being his brother's fon, though by right of reprefentation he stood in the place of his father Geoffrey. And however flimfy this title, and those of William Rufus and Stephen of Blois, may appear at this distance to us, after the law of descents hath now been fettled for so many centuries, they were fufficient to puzzle the understandings

i "Regni Angliae; quod nobis jure competit baereditario." Spelm. Hift. R. Job, apud Wilkins 354.