Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/216

200 principal of which was it’s decendibility. Here then we mut drop our race of Saxon kings, at leat for a while, and derive our decents from William the conqueror as from a new tock, who acquired by right of war (uch as it is, yet till the dernier reort of kings) a trong and undiputed title to the inheritable crown of England.

it decended from him to his ons William II and Henry I. Robert, it mut be owned, his eldet on, was kept out of poeion by the arts and violence of his brethren; who perhaps might proceed upon a notion, which prevailed for ome time in the law of decents, (though never adopted as the rule of public ucceions ) that when the eldet on was already provided for (as Robert was contituted duke of Normandy by his father’s will) in uch a cae the next brother was entitled to enjoy the ret of their father’s inheritance. But, as he died without iue, Henry at lat had a good title to the throne, whatever he might have at firt. of Blois, who ucceeded him, was indeed the grandon of the conqueror, by Adelicia his daughter, and claimed the throne by a feeble kind of hereditary right; not as being the nearet of the male line, but as the nearet male of the blood royal, excepting his elder brother Theobald, who was earl of Blois, and therefore eems to have waved, as he certainly never inited on, o troubleome and precarious a claim. The real right was in the empres Matilda or Maud, the daughter of Henry I; the rule of ucceion being (where women are admitted at all) that the daughter of a on hall be preferred to the on of a daughter. So that Stephen was little better than a mere uurper; and therefore he rather choe to rely on a title by election, while the empres Maud did not fail to aert her hereditary right by the word: which dipute was attended with various ucces, and ended at lat in a compromie, that Stephen hould keep the crown,