One point however must be mentioned. To prove the strictly hereditary nature of the succession, Blackstone (i. 189, Kerr) quotes the Statute of 25 Edward III. “that the law of the Crown of England is, and always hath been, that the children of the King of England, whether born in England or elsewhere, ought to bear the inheritance after the death of their ancestors.” We are bound to suppose that these learned lawyers had read through the statute which they quoted; but it is wonderful that they did not see that it had nothing whatever to do with fixing the hereditary succession of the Crown. The original text (Revised Statutes, i. 176) runs thus:— “La lei de la Corone Dengleterre est, et ad este touz jours tiele, que les enfantz des Rois Dengleterre, _queu part qils soient neez en Engleterre ou aillors_, sont ables et deivent porter heritage, apres la mort lour auncestors.” The object of the statute is something quite different from what any one would think from Blackstone’s way of quoting it. The emphatic words are those which are put in italics. The object of the statute is to make the King’s children and others born of English parents beyond sea capable of inheriting in England. As far as the succession to the Crown is concerned, its effect is simply to put a child of the King born out of the realm on a level with his brother born in the realm; that is, in the view of our older Law, to give both alike the preference due to an Ætheling. (34) It is as well to explain this, because most people seem to think that a man becomes a Bishop by virtue of receiving a private letter from the First Lord of the Treasury. We constantly see a man spoken of as Bishop of such a see, and his works advertised as such, before a single ecclesiastical or legal step has been taken to make him so. (35) See Norman Conquest, iii. 44, 623. (36) The succession of a grandson, which first took place in England in the case of Richard the Second, marks a distinct stage in the growth of the doctrine of hereditary right. It involves the doctrine of representation, which is a very subtle and technical one, and is not nearly so obvious or so likely to occur in an early state of society as the doctrine of nearness of kin. No opposition was made to the accession of Richard the Second, but there seems to have been a strong notion in men’s minds that John of Gaunt sought to displace his nephew. In earlier times, as the eldest and most eminent of the surviving sons of Edward the Third, John would probably have been elected without any thought of the claims of young Richard.