I. _The King’s Title._ Some points of interest are suggested by the form of the royal style adopted by John, which is connected by an unbroken thread of development with that of William I. on the one hand, and of His Majesty, Edward VII., on the other. John’s assumption of the royal plural “_Sciatis Nos_” reads, in the light of subsequent history, as a tribute to his arrogance rather than to his greatness, when compared with the humbler first person singular consistently used by his more distinguished father. In this particular, however, Richard, not John, had been the innovator on the usage of Henry II.[325] For a further alteration in the royal style John was alone responsible. To the titles borne by his father and brother, John invariably added that of “lord of Ireland,” a reminiscence of his youth. When the wide territories of Henry II., had been distributed among his elder sons, the young John (hence known as “John Lackland”) was left without a heritage, until his father bestowed on him the island of Ireland, recently appropriated; and this brought with it the right to style himself “_dominus Hibernie_.” This title of his younger days was not unnaturally retained by him after he had outlived all his brothers and inherited their wide lands and honours. ----- Footnote 325: Coke (_Second Institute_, pp. 1-2) is here in error; he makes John the innovator. ----- John began his reign in 1199 as ruler over the undivided possessions of the House of Anjou at their widest stretch, extending without a break, other than the waters of the Channel, from the Cheviots to the Pyrenees. These lands were held by John, as by his father, under a variety of titles and conditions. Anjou, the original home and fief of the hot-blooded Plantagenet race, still carried with it only the modest rank of count. In addition to this paternal title, Henry II. had, at an early age, become duke of Normandy in his mother’s right, and thereafter duke of Aquitaine by marriage with Eleanor, its heiress. These three great fiefs were held by Henry and his sons under the king of France as their lord paramount. Long before 1215, John’s bad fortune or incompetence had lost to him these wide continental dominions except the most distant of them all, his mother’s dowry of Aquitaine. His ancestral domains of Anjou and Normandy had been irretrievably lost, but he still retained their empty titles; and in this his son Henry III. followed him, grasping the shadow long after the substance had fled. Entries relating to Gascony frequently appear on the Rolls of Parliament of Edward I.; and the kings of England were styled dukes of Aquitaine, dukes of Guienne, or dukes of Gascony (the three descriptions being used indifferently) until Edward III. merged all these titles in a wider one, when he claimed the throne of France.