formed the only plausible part of the claim by which William asserted his right to thrust himself upon a people of strangers. And now a nomination by William himself was the only right by which his second surviving son claimed to succeed to the crown which he had won. Modern notions of hereditary right would have handed over England as well as Normandy to the eldest son of the last king. English feeling at the time would doubtless, if a formal choice had to be made among the sons of the Conqueror of England, have spoken for his youngest son. Of all the three Henry alone was a true Ætheling; he alone had any right to the name of Englishman; he alone was the son of a crowned king and a man born in the land.[1] But the last wish of William the Great was that his island crown should pass to William the Red. He had not, as our fullest narrative tells us, dared to make any formal nomination to a kingdom which he had in his last days found out to be his only by wrong. He had not dared to name William as his successor; he left the kingdom in the hands of God; he only hoped that the will of God might be that William should reign, and should reign well and happily.[2] And as the best means of finding out whether the will of God were so, he left the actual decision to the highest and wisest of God's ministers in his kingdom. He gave no orders for the
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. pp. 228, 795. So Will. Neub. i. 3; "Filiorum quidem Willelmi Magni ordine nativitatis novissimus, sed prærogativa primus. Quippe, aliis in ducatu patris natis, solus ipse ex eodem jam rege est ortus." This is noteworthy in a writer in whom (see Appendix A) we see the first sign of a notion of Robert's hereditary right. The author of the Brevis Relatio (9) goes yet further, and seems to assert that a party at least was for Henry's immediate succession; "Sicut postea multi dixerunt, justum fuit ut ipse rex Angliæ post patrem suum esset qui de patre rege et matre regina genitus extitisset."
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 706, note 3.
