three sons. Examples of genius
or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest families; and, in a
remote age their pride will embrace a deed of rapine and violence;
such, however, as could not be perpetrated without some superiority of
courage, or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay
may blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king's duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not
be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count
of Champagne prepared to march against him at the head of an army. [74]
Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his daughter
on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned
with a numerous offspring. We might expect that a private should have
merged in a royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France
and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors of
princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long neglected,
and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the
story of this second branch. _1._ Of all the families now extant, the
most ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house of
France, which has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years,
and descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle
of the ninth century. [75] In the age of the crusades, it was already
revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage
of Peter, no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and
so precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary
precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their
fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their precedency
before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had the princes of
the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which
is now diffused over the most remote candidates for the succession. _2._
The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estimation,
and in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a king
the obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the name
and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress
with her inferior or her equal, such exchange often required and
allowed: but as they continued to diverge from the regal st