of Henry I. (by Matilda
of Scotland, sister of Edgar Atheling, and therefore of the Saxon blood
royal), who was son of William the Conqueror. Thus Queen Victoria is
descended legitimately from the Conqueror, not only through Lionel, Duke
of Clarence, Edward III.'s third son, but also through that monarch's
fifth son, Edmund, Duke of York, whose second son, the Earl of
Cambridge, married the great-granddaughter of the Duke of Clarence. Had
the great struggle of the English throne in the fifteenth century been
correctly named, it would stand in history as the contest between the
lines of Clarence (not York) and Lancaster. In virtue of her descent
from Henry VII., Queen Victoria shares "the aspiring blood of
Lancaster," which was so mounting that it brought the worst of woes on
England. Henry VII. was the son of Margaret Beaufort (by Edmund Tudor,
Earl of Richmond), who was the daughter of John, Duke of Somerset, who
was the son of John, Earl of Somerset, who was the son of John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III.; but the mother of the Earl
of Somerset was, at the time of his birth, not the wife, but the
mistress of the Duke of Lancaster, though he married her late in life,
and in various ways obtained the legitimation of the children she had
borne him,--facts that could not remove the great fact of their
illegitimacy, if marriage is to count for anything and which no good
historian has treated with respect. Lord Macaulay calls the Tudors "a
line of bastards," and ranks them with the "succession of impostors" set
up by the adherents of the White Rose. Froude's great work has created a
new interest in the question of the English succession, for he bases his
peculiar view of the character of Henry VIII., and his justification of
all his acts of heartless tyranny, on the necessities that grew out of
that perplexing question, which troubled England for two centuries, thus
forming a practical satire on that theory which represents that the
peculiar excellence of hereditary monarchy is found in its power to
prevent disputes for the possession of government, and to promote the
preservation of society's peace,--a theory which has often been thrown
into the teeth of republicans, and particularly since the occurrence of
our unhappy civil troubles. Yet one would think that Gettysburg and
Shiloh were not worse days than Towton and Barnet. Those persons who are
interested in the English succession question, and who wo