Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/217

Ch. 3. crown, but that Henry the on of Maud hould ucceed him; as he afterwards accordingly did. , the econd of that name, was (next after his mother Matilda) the undoubted heir of William the conqueror; but he had alo another connexion in blood, which endeared him till farther to the Englih. He was lineally decended from Edmund Ironide, the lat of the Saxon race of hereditary kings. For Edward the outlaw, the on of Edmund Ironide, had (beides Edgar Atheling, who died without iue) a daughter Margaret, who was married to Malcolm king of Scotland; and in her the Saxon hereditary right reided. By Malcolm he had everal children, and among the ret Matilda the wife of Henry I, who by him had the empres Maud, the mother of Henry II. Upon which account the Saxon line is in our hitories frequently aid to have been retored in his peron: though in reality that right ubited in the ons of Malcolm by queen Margaret; king Henry’s bet title being as heir to the conqueror. Henry II the crown decended to his eldet on Richard I, who dying childles, the right veted in his nephew Arthur, the on of Geoffrey his next brother: but John, the younget on of king Henry, eied the throne; claiming, as appears from his charters, the crown by hereditary right : that is to ay, he was next of kin to the deceaed king, being his urviving brother; whereas Arthur was removed one degree farther, being his brother’s on, though by right of repreentation he tood in the place of his father Geoffrey. And however flimey this title, and thoe of William Rufus and Stephen of Blois, may appear at this ditance to us, after the law of decents hath now been ettled for o many centuries, they were ufficient to puzzle the undertandings of our brave, but unlettered, ancetors. Nor indeed can we wonder at the number of partizans, who epoued the pretenions of king John in particular; ince even in the reign Rh