Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/473

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 451 of this humble kindred ; the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction and established St. Louis as the first father of the royal line/-*' A repetition of complaints and protests was i*epeatedly disregarded : and the hopeless pursuit was terminated in the present century by the death of the last male of the family.''* Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue ; they sternly rejected the temptations of fortune and favour ; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France. ^^ III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courte- m The nays of Devonshire are descended from Prince Flon/s, the second England son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat.^"*^ This fable of the grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Camden ^^^ and Dugdale ; ^°2 but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faith- ful historians believe that, after giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second dis- tinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the name, arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race of ■" The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by Thuanus : Principis nomen nusquam in Gallia tributum, nisi iis qui per matres e regibus nostris originem re- petunt : qui nunc tantum a Ludovico Nono beatns memorite numerantur : nam Cortinaei et Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos mininie recensentur : — a distinction of expediency rather than justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not invest him with any special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh Capet must be included in his original compact with the French nation. "8 The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last female was Helen de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed (February 7, 1737) by an arret of the parliament of Paris. ^ The singular anecdote to which I allude, is related in the Recueil des Pieces int^ressantes et peu connues (Maestricht, 1786, in four vols. i2mo) ; and the un- known editor [M. de la Place, of Calais] quotes his author, who had received it from Helen de Courtenay, Marquise de Beaufremont. i<*" Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward HL The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey was followed by oppression on one side and in- gratitude on the other ; and in the sixth generation the monks ceased to register the births, actions, and deaths of their patrons. ^"^ In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos credunt, betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion. 1"' In his Baronage, p. i. p. 634, he refers to his own Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford Abbey, and annihilated the phantom Floras, by the unquestionable evidence of the French historians ?