nded from him to his sons William II and Henry I.
Robert, it must be owned, his eldest son, was kept out of possession
by the arts and violence of his brethren; who proceeded upon a notion,
which prevailed for some time in the law of descents, that when the
eldest son was already provided for (as Robert was constituted duke of
Normandy by his father's will) in such a case the next brother was
entitled to enjoy the rest of their father's inheritance. But, as he
died without issue, Henry at last had a good title to the throne,
whatever he might have at first.

STEPHEN of Blois, who succeeded him, was indeed the grandson of the
conqueror, by Adelicia his daughter, and claimed the throne by a
feeble kind of hereditary right; not as being the nearest of the male
line, but as the nearest male of the blood royal. The real right was
in the empress Matilda or Maud, the daughter of Henry I; the rule of
succession being (where women are admitted at all) that the daughter
of a son shall be preferred to the son of a daughter. So that Stephen
was little better than a mere usurper; and the empress Maud did not
fail to assert her right by the sword: which dispute was attended with
various success, and ended at last in a compromise, that Stephen
should keep the crown, but that Henry the son of Maud should succeed
him; as he afterwards accordingly did.

HENRY, the second of that name, was the undoubted heir of William the
conqueror; but he had also another connexion in blood, which endeared
him still farther to the English. He was lineally descended from
Edmund Ironside, the last of the Saxon race of hereditary kings. For
Edward the outlaw, the son of Edmund Ironside, had (besides Edgar
Atheling, who died without issue) a daughter Margaret, who was married
to Malcolm king of Scotland; and in her the Saxon hereditary right
resided. By Malcolm she had several children, and among the rest
Matilda the wife of Henry I, who by him had the empress Maud, the
mother of Henry II. Upon which account the Saxon line is in our
histories frequently said to have been restored in his person: though
in reality that right subsisted in the _sons_ of Malcolm by queen
Margaret; king Henry's best title being as heir to the conqueror.

FROM Henry II the crown descended to his eldest son Richard I, who
dying childless, the right vested in his nephew Arthur, the son of
Geoffrey his next brother; but John, the youngest son of king Henry,
seised the throne; clai