I have said that England, by reason of the Norman Conquest, was caught up into the political affairs of the Continent. This was not merely because Normandy was a part of that Continent. It was chiefly because of the relationship or connection by marriage of the {148} ruler of Normandy, who had now become the ruler of England also, with the ruler of another part of that country which we now call France--that is, of Anjou. In order to understand how this happened, we have to get these troublesome relationships into our mind. [Illustration: A NORMAN HOUSEHOLD. (A banquet is in progress upstairs.) (From Wright's _Homes of Other Days_.)] Hugh Capet, as has been said, was chosen by the nobles of France, out of their own number, to be king when the family of Charlemagne became extinct. At first, being as it were but one among the rest of the nobles, the kings of the Capetian family had little more authority than one of those nobles. William I. of Normandy and England was succeeded by William II., Rufus, who was shot by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest. The elder son of {149} Rufus, by name Robert, was far away. He had gone on the first Crusade. Henry, the younger son, seized the English throne, and married an English wife. They had no son, but they had a daughter named Matilda. This Matilda then, on the death of her father Henry I., had this clear and distinct claim to the throne of England. [Sidenote: The Crown of England] But there was also in the world, and ready to take a crown if he could get one, a certain Stephen, who was the son of a daughter of William the Conqueror. Stephen therefore, as the Conqueror's grandson, had a claim to the throne. The barons of England seem to have given their support now to one and now to the other of these two claimants, bringing their forces to the help of the side which, at the moment, was getting the worse of the struggle. Their idea seems to have been to keep the trouble going in order to make their own power greater. At length the whole country wearied of the fighting, and a peace was made on the following terms: that Stephen should have the Crown during his life, and that at his death it should go to the son of Matilda. This son's name was Henry, and he did, in due course, succeed to the Crown, on Stephen's death, as Henry II. Now, notice whom Matilda, his mother, had married. She had married first the Emperor, Henry V., and secondly, the Count of Anjou. Her son Henry inherited Anjou from her, and married Eleanor, who was heiress of Aquitaine and Poitou, in the south of France, and was the divorced wife of the King of France. By his marriage, therefore, Henry became lord of Aquitaine. Then King Stephen died, and this same Henry, our Henry II., had England, Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. That is to say his possessions on the Continent were more extensive than his English inheritance and also were more extensive than the lands of the King of France himself. {150}