a fable, and the name Crouchback
had been given to Edmund not because his back was crooked, but because
he had worn a cross on his back as a crusader (see p. 197). That Henry
should have thought it necessary to allude to this story, if such was
really his meaning, shows the hold which the idea of hereditary
succession had taken on the minds of Englishmen. In no other way could
he claim hereditary right as a descendant of Henry III. Richard had
selected as his heir Roger Mortimer, the son of the daughter of
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the next son of Edward III., after the Black
Prince, who lived to be old enough to have children. Roger Mortimer,
indeed, had recently been killed in Ireland, but he had left a boy,
Edmund Mortimer, who, on hereditary principles, was heir to the
kingdom, unless the doctrine announced by Edward III. that a claim to
the crown descended through females was to be set aside. In fact the
real importance of the change of kings lay not in what Henry said, but
in what he avoided saying. It was a reversion to the old right of
election, and to the precedent set in the deposition of Edward II.
Henry tacitly announced that in critical times, when the wearer of the
crown was hopelessly incompetent, the nation, represented by
Parliament, might step in and change the order of succession. The
question at issue was not merely a personal one between Richard and
Henry. It was a question between hereditary succession leading to
despotism on the one side, and to parliamentary choice, perhaps to
anarchy, on the other. That there were dangers attending the latter
solution of the constitutional problem would not be long in appearing.

_Books recommended for further study of Part III._

GREEN, J. R. History of the English People. Vol. i. pp. 189-520.

STUBBS, W. (Bishop of Oxford). Constitutional History of England. Vol.
i. chap. xii. sections 151-155; vol. ii. chaps. ix. and x.

---- The Early Plantagenets, 129-276.

NORGATE, Miss K. England under the Angevin Kings. Vol. ii. p. 390.

MICHELET, J. History of France (Middle Ages). Translated by G. H.
Smith.

LONGMAN, W. The History of the Life and Times of Edward III.

GAIRDNER, James. The Houses of Lancaster and York, pp. 1-64.

ROGERS, James E. Thorold. A History of Agriculture and Prices in
England. Vols. i. and ii.

CUNNINGHAM, W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce in the Early
and Middle Ages, pp. 172-365.

WAKEMAN, H. O. and HASSALL, A. (Edit