principal of which was it’s deſcendibility. 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 ſtock, who acquired by right of war (ſuch as it is, yet ſtill the dernier reſort of kings) a ſtrong and undiſputed title to the inheritable crown of England.
Accordingly it deſcended from him to his ſons William II and Henry I. Robert, it muſt be owned, his eldeſt ſon, was kept out of poſſeſſion by the arts and violence of his brethren; who perhaps might proceed upon a notion, which prevailed for ſome time in the law of deſcents, (though never adopted as the rule of public ſucceſſions[1]) that when the eldeſt ſon was already provided for (as Robert was conſtituted duke of Normandy by his father’s will) in ſuch a caſe the next brother was entitled to enjoy the reſt of their father’s inheritance. But, as he died without iſſue, Henry at laſt had a good title to the throne, whatever he might have at firſt.
Stephen of Blois, who ſucceeded 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 ſeems to have waved, as he certainly never inſiſted on, ſo troubleſome and precarious a claim. The real right was in the empreſs Matilda or Maud, the daughter of Henry I; the rule of ſucceſſion being (where women are admitted at all) that the daughter of a ſon ſhall be preferred to the ſon of a daughter. So that Stephen was little better than a mere uſurper; and therefore he rather choſe to rely on a title by election[2], while the empreſs Maud did not fail to aſſert her hereditary right by the ſword: which diſpute was attended with various ſucceſs, and ended at laſt in a compromiſe, that Stephen ſhould keep the
