The English Kingship elective, both before

and after the

CHAPTER VI.

THE SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN,

THE elective character of the old English kingship, but with the choice exclusively limited, under all ordinary circumstances, to the members of one royal house, has been Conquest. already discussed in a previous chapter.1 The Norman Conquest introduced a new dynasty, and a more comprehensive idea of royalty, combining both the national and feudal theories of sovereignty; but it effected no legal change in the nature of the succession to the crown. Election by the National Assembly was still necessary to confer an inchoate right to become King-a right subsequently perfected by the ecclesiastical ceremony of inunction and coronation. So strongly marked was the elective character of the kingly office that, even after the choice of the Nation had been once made, the form of election was again gone through by the clergy and people assembled in

Supra, p. 27, 32-34.

2 On the origin of coronation and unction see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 144, 145. The ancient English kings were both crowned with a helmet and anointed. The ceremony was understood as bestowing the divine ratification on the election that had preceded it, and as typifying rather than conveying the spiritual gifts for which prayer was made. That it was regarded as conveying any spiritual character, or any special ecclesiastical prerogative, there is nothing to show rather from the facility with which crowned kings could be set aside and new ones put in their place, without any objection on the part of the bishops, the exact contrary may be inferred. That the powers that be are ordained of God, was a truth recognized as a motive to obedience, without any suspicion of the doctrine, so falsely imputed to churchmen of all ages, of the indefeasible sanctity of royalty. The statements of Allen (Prerogative, p. 22) on this point are very shallow and unfair. To attribute the ideas of the seventeenth century to the ages of S. Gregory, Anselm, and Becket seems an excess of absurdity.-Ibid. p. 146.

!

the church at the coronation. The doctrine of the heredi- Growth of the doctrine tary descent of the crown gradually grew up, as the terri- of hereditary torial idea of kingship superseded the personal idea, during right. the two centuries after the Conquest. As the King of the English developed into the King of England, the feudal lord of the land, the kingdom came to be regarded by kings and courtiers as the private possession of the Sovereign, to be enjoyed for his own personal profit; and by degrees the feudal lawyers, arguing from a false analogy, applied to the Crown the same principles of strict hereditary right which had already begun to regulate the descent of a private inheritance. But the forms of election and coronation still continued, and periodically, as the throne became vacant on the death of each Sovereign, bore witness to the fallacy of this legal theory, Edward II., who succeeded in 1 307, was the first king whose reign was dated from the day following the death of his predecessor. In him, then, the principle of hereditary right appeared to have finally triumphed over the old elective system. But the true nature of the Crown as an office or trust, and the continuing right of the Nation to regulate the succession to it, were signally re-asserted not twenty years later, by the formal deposition of this unfortunate King. This per

See Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. iii.; Freeman, Norm. Conq. iii. 44, 623.

Supra, p. 44.

3 John was the first who called himself Rex Angliae' on his great seal; all his predecessors had been Kings of the English.’

If the descendants of the Conqueror had succeeded one another by the ordinary rule of inheritance, there can be no doubt but that the forms as well as the reality of ancient liberty would have perished. Owing to the necessity, however, under which each of them lay, of making for himself a title in default of hereditary right, the ancient framework was not set aside; and perfunctory as to a great extent the forms of election and coronation were, they did not lose such real importance as they had possessed earlier, but furnished an important acknowledgment of the rights of the nation, as well as a recognition of the duties of the king. The crown, then, continues to be elective: the form of coronation is duly performed: the oath of good government is taken, and the promises of the oath are exemplified in the form of charters. . . . The recog nition of the king by the people was effected by the formal acceptance at the coronation of the person whom the national council had elected, by the acts of homage and fealty performed by the tenants-in-chief, and by the general oath of allegiance imposed upon the whole people, and taken by every freeman once at least in his life.'-Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 338, 339.

William the
Conqueror,

William
Rufus, A.D.

1087.

sistence of the national right to choose the Sovereign, the same in principle whether applied to the individual King or to the selected dynasty, we shall now consider somewhat more in detail.

We have seen how William the Norman found little difA. D. 1066. ficulty, immediately after the Battle of Hastings, in procuring his election by the terrified Witan. After taking the ancient oath of the English kings, constituting a compact with the nation to govern with justice and equity, he was duly crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of Accession of York. On his death-bed the Conqueror bequeathed to his eldest surviving son, Robert, the patrimonial Duchy of Normandy. The Crown of England he would not attempt to bequeath, declaring that he held it not by hereditary right; he left the succession to the decision of God. He expressed, however, his ardent wish that his younger and favourite son William should succeed to the kingship of the English, in much the same way as formerly Eadward the Confessor had recommended his brother-in-law Harold. Furnished with a recommendatory letter from his father to Archbishop Lanfranc, as the head of the Witenagem&t, William Rufus at once hastened to England. Here he was obliged to make a triple promise,-to rule his future subjects with justice, equity, and mercy, to protect the rights and privileges of the Church, and to conform to the Primate's counsels in all things-before Lanfranc would declare in his favour. Having secured this powerful supporter, he was elected King at a meeting of the prelates and barons, in the third week after his father's death, and immediately crowned with the usual solemnities."

Henry I.

A. D. II00.

On the death of William Rufus in the New Forest, on the 2nd of August, 1100, his younger brother Henry, being close at hand, and having secured the royal treasure, was

1 Supra, p. 47:

Neminem Anglici regni constituo haeredem, sed aeterno Conditori Cujus sum et in Cujus manu sunt omnia illud commendo: non enim tantum decus hereditario jure possedi.'-Ordericus Vital. vii. 15.

3 Order. Vital. vii. 15, 16.

4 Eadmer, Hist. Nov. lib. i. p. 13; Chron. A. Sax. 192; Lingard, ii. 76.

hastily elected King the following day at Winchester. But, although the election was the hurried act of a small number of the barons, it was something more than a mere form. The claims of Henry's absent elder brother, Robert the Crusader, were advanced and discussed. They rested not merely on priority of birth, but upon the wishes of the late King, expressed in the arrangement which he had made with Duke Robert, at Caen, in 1091, that each should be heir to the other in case of his dying childless. Ultimately the arguments of the Earl of Warwick gained a decision in Henry's favour; and two days afterwards (Aug. 5) he was crowned at Westminster, by Maurice, Bishop of London, and took the ancient coronation oath of the English kings. In the Charter of Liberties, which he issued at the same time, he announces to the nation his coronation Dei misericordiâ et communi consilio baronum totius regni Angliae.'

A.D. 1135.

The male line of the Conqueror became extinct on the Stephen. death of Henry I. The late King had endeavoured to secure the crown to his own offspring, first by inducing the baronage to do homage and fealty to his son William, and, after the untimely death of the Etheling, by exacting, on three separate occasions, an oath from the prelates and barons to acknowledge the Empress Matilda as his successor. This was a stretch of the King's constitutional

1 William Rufus was slain on a Thursday and buried the next morning; and after he was buried, the Witan, who were then near at hand, chose his brother Henry as King, and he forthwith gave the bishopric of Winchester to William Giffard, and then went to London.'-Chron. A. Sax. A.D. 1100.

15 A. D. 1100. 'Occiso vero rege Willelmo. . . . (Henricus) in regem electus est, aliquantis tamen ante controversiis inter proceres agitatis atque sopitis, annitente maxime comite Warwicensi Henrico.'-Will. Malmes. Gesta Regum, v. 393.

The exact words of the oath, agreeing with the ancient form used at the coronation of King Ethelred II. have been preserved: In Christi nomine promitto haec tria populo Christiano mihi subdito. In primis me praeceptu rum et opem pro viribus impensurum ut ecclesia Dei et omnis populus Christianus veram pacem nostro arbitrio in omni tempore servet; aliud ut rapacitates et omnes iniquitates omnibus gradibus interdicam; tertium ut in omnibus judiciis aequitatem et misericordiam praecipiam, ut mihi et vobis indulgeat suam misericordiam clemens et misericors Deus.'-Maskell, Mon. Rit. iii. 5, 6; Select Chart. 95.

Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, 215.

powers; and the attempt to bind men's consciences more firmly by the triple repetition of the oath would seem to indicate his own distrust. A recommendation to the nation was all he could lawfully give, and it was a moot point whether even this recommendation had not been withdrawn on his death-bed. Morcover, a woman was incapable of performing the martial duties which then appertained to royalty, and the acceptance of the Empress Matilda practically meant subjection to the rule of her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou-a man obnoxious to the Normans as an Angevin, to both English and Normans as a foreigner. On the third occasion when fealty had been sworn to the Empress, her infant son, afterwards Henry II., was joined with her, and was nominated by his grandfather to be king after him. But, as the child was little more than two years old when the throne became vacant by Henry's death, he was clearly ineligible. Such being the position of affairs, the prompt action of Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne, his personal popularity with the men of London and Winchester, and the great influence of his brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, ensured his election and coronation. To call him a usurper is an abuse of the term. His clection, like that of his uncle, Henry I., was, indeed, somewhat irregular, few only of the magnates having been present: but the paucity of magnates was counterbalanced by the presence and support of the citizens of London, who might fairly

1 Gesta Stephani, p. 7.

Cont. Flor. Wig. App. Volente igitur Gaufrido comite cum uxore sua, quae haeres erat, in regnum succedere, primores terrae, juramenti sui maie recordantes regem eum suscipere noluerunt, dicentes "Alienigena non regnabit super nos: initoque consilio, Stephano comiti . . . coronam regni imposuerunt.'-Select Chart. 110.

3

Stephen was a younger son of Stephen, Count of Blois, by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. His wife, Matilda, was the daughter and heiress of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, by Mary, younger sister of Matilda, wife of Henry I. and niece of Eadgar Etheling.

Will. Malmes. Hist. Nov. i. § 11.

5 'Coronatus est ergo in regem Angliae Stephanus. . . tribus episcopis praesentibus, archiepiscopo, Wintoniensi, Salisberiensi, nullis abbatibus, paucissimis optimatibus.'-Ibid. loc. cit.