If this principle that the daughter or the issue of the daughter of an elder brother should count before the male issue of a younger brother had been granted in its entirety, Edward would have had no claim, because this elder brother of Charles IV., Louis X., had had issue--that daughter, Joan, the wife of the King of Navarre. So Edward qualified this first general principle, that one could inherit through women, by another principle, to wit, that, though the _claim_ to the throne should proceed through the _daughters_ of _elder_ brothers rather than through the _sons_ of _younger_ ones, yet the _throne_ could _itself_ only actually be held by a male! By this tortuous combination Edward III. advanced his claim. His mother had been the grand-daughter of Philip III. of France, and he was a male. Her father was the elder brother of Philip of Valois' father, so he claimed before Philip of Valois. The whole scheme is apparent from the following table:-- Philip III. 1270-1285. | | ---------------------------------------------- | | Philip IV. 1285-1314 Charles of Valois | | ------------------------------------- | | | | | | Louis X. Philip V. Charles IV. Isabella=Edward II. Philip VI. 1314-1316 1316-1322 1322-1328 | 1328-1350 | | (_Crécy_) | | | | Edward III. | Joan=King of Navarre | John Edward the Black 1350-1364 Prince. (_Poitiers_). But, I repeat, we must not take Edward's political claim too seriously. His real object was not so much to establish himself upon the throne of France and to create a great French-speaking united monarchy of French and British under the single rule of the Plantagenets, as to try a great adventure and to see what would come of it. It was this that gave to Edward's wars the character not of campaigns with a fixed object, but GREAT RAIDS, the very successes of which were unexpected and only half fruitful. It was this, again, which made him so uncertain and vacillating as to how he should use those successes when they came; which made him suggest now this, now that basis for peace after each victory, but never to insist very particularly, however surprising and thorough his work in the field, upon the French throne.