2. =The French Succession. 1328--1331.=--Isabella's three brothers, Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in France. Louis X. died in =1316=, leaving behind him a daughter and a posthumous son, who died a week after his birth. Then Philip V. seized the crown, his lawyers asserting that, according to the Salic law, 'no part of the heritage of Salic land can fall to a woman,' and that therefore no woman could rule in France. As a matter of fact this was a mere quibble of the lawyers. The Salic law had been the law of the Salian Franks in the fifth century, and had to do with the inheritance of estates, not with the inheritance of the throne of France, which was not at that time in existence. The quibble, however, was used on the right side. What Frenchmen wanted was that France should remain an independent nation, which it was not likely to do under a queen who might marry the king of another country. The rule thus laid down was permanently adopted in France. When Philip V. died in =1322= the throne passed, not to his daughter, but to his brother, Charles IV., and when Charles died in =1328=, to his cousin, Philip of Valois, who reigned as Philip VI. At that time England was still under the control of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for her son, Mortimer did not press the claim. In =1329= he sent Edward to do homage to Philip VI. for his French possessions, but Edward only did it with certain reservations, and in =1330= preparations for war were made in England. In =1331=, after Mortimer's fall, when Edward was his own master, he again visited France, and a treaty was concluded between the two kings in which he abandoned the reservations on his homage. [Illustration: Effigies of Edward III. and Queen Philippa; from their tombs in Westminster Abbey.]