lood royal) who was the son of
Edward the outlaw, and grandson of Edmund Ironside; or, as Matthew
Paris[d] well expresses the sense of our old constitution, "_Edmundus
autem latusferreum, rex naturalis de stirpe regum, genuit Edwardum; et
Edwardus genuit Edgarum, cui de jure debebatur regnum Anglorum_."

[Footnote d: _A.D._ 1066.]

WILLIAM the Norman claimed the crown by virtue of a pretended grant
from king Edward the confessor; a grant which, if real, was in itself
utterly invalid: because it was made, as Harold well observed in his
reply to William's demand[e], "_absque generali senatus et populi
conventu et edicto_;" which also very plainly implies, that it then
was generally understood that the king, with consent of the general
council, might dispose of the crown and change the line of succession.
William's title however was altogether as good as Harold's, he being a
mere private subject, and an utter stranger to the royal blood. Edgar
Atheling's undoubted right was overwhelmed by the violence of the
times; though frequently asserted by the English nobility after the
conquest, till such time as he died without issue: but all their
attempts proved unsuccessful, and only served the more firmly to
establish the crown in the family which had newly acquired it.

[Footnote e: William of Malmsb. _l._ 3.]

THIS conquest then by William of Normandy was, like that of Canute
before, a forcible transfer of the crown of England into a new family:
but, the crown being so transferred, all the inherent properties of
the crown were with it transferred also. For, the victory obtained at
Hastings not being[f] a victory over the nation collectively, but only
over the person of Harold, the only right that the conqueror could
pretend to acquire thereby, was the right to possess the crown of
England, not to alter the nature of the government. And therefore, as
the English laws still remained in force, he must necessarily take
the crown subject to those laws, and with all it's inherent
properties; the first and principal of which was it's descendibility.
Here then we must drop our race of Saxon kings, at least for a while,
and derive our descents from William the conqueror as from a new
stock, who acquired by right of war (such as it is, yet still the
_dernier resort_ of kings) a strong and undisputed title to the
inheritable crown of England.

[Footnote f: Hale, Hist. C.L. c. 5. Seld. review of tithes, c. 8.]

ACCORDINGLY it desce