Only one English chronicler gives or even pretends to give any hint of the grounds on which this choice was, either really or nominally, based. In no English writer of the time do we find any indication that the connexion of Louis of France with the reigning royal house of England, through his marriage with John’s sister’s daughter, had, or was supposed to have, anything to do with it. The claim to the English crown which Louis afterwards put forth on this ground seems to have been an idea of purely French origin, which not only had never suggested itself to any English mind, but, when it was suggested, failed to meet with general recognition even among Louis’s partizans in England. The intricate rules of succession, and especially of female succession, which it pre-supposed were as yet, when applied to the Crown at least, completely strange to English statesmen. Moreover, it is by no means clear that the barons who offered the Crown to Louis had any real intention of transferring it to him and his heirs for ever. Roger of Wendover tells us that “after hesitating for some time whom they should choose, they at length agreed upon this, that they would set over themselves Louis, the son of King Philip of France, and raise him up to be king of England. Their reason was that if through the agency of Louis and his father King John could be deprived of the host of foreign soldiers who surrounded him, most of whom were subjects of Louis[1131] or Philip, he, being without support from either side of the sea, would be left alone and unable to fight.”[1132] In other words, they wanted Louis as a tool wherewith to crush John; and to gain him for their tool they offered him the bribe of the crown, thinking that when their immediate purpose should be accomplished it would be time enough to consider whether the annexation of England to France would or would not really profit them better than to break faith with their new lord as they had broken it with their old one.