the ecclesiastical ceremony began. But the ecclesiastical election survived the civil one. The state of things which lawyers dream of from the beginning is a law of strict hereditary succession, broken in upon by occasional interruptions. These interruptions, which, in the eye of history, are simply exercises of an ancient right, are, in the eyes of lawyers, only revolutions or usurpations. But this state of things, a state in which a fixed rule was sometimes broken, which Blackstone dreams of in the tenth and eleventh centuries, really did exist from the thirteenth century onwards. From the accession of Edward the First, the first King who reigned before his coronation, hereditary succession became the rule in practice. The son, or even the grandson, of the late King(36) was commonly acknowledged as a matter of course, without anything which could fairly be called an election. But the right of Parliament to settle the succession was constantly exercised, and ever and anon we come across signs which show that the ancient notion of an election of a still more popular kind had not wholly passed away out of men’s minds. Two Kings were formally deposed, and on the deposition of the second the Crown passed, as it might have done in ancient times, to a branch of the royal house which was not the next in lineal succession. Three Kings of the House of Lancaster reigned by a good parliamentary title, and the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right, the doctrine that there was some virtue in a particular line of succession which the power of Parliament itself could not set aside, was first brought forward as the formal justification of the claims of the House of York(37). Those claims in truth could not be formally justified on any showing but that of the most slavish doctrine of divine right, but it was not on any such doctrine as that that the cause of the House of York really rested. The elaborate list of grandmothers and great-grandmothers which was brought forward to show that Henry the Fifth was an usurper would never have been heard of if the government of Henry the Sixth had not become utterly unpopular, while Richard Duke of York was the best beloved man of his time. Richard accepted a parliamentary compromise, which of course implied the right of Parliament to decide the question. Henry was to keep the Crown for life, and Richard was to displace Henry’s son as heir-apparent. That is to say, according to a custom common in Germany, though rare in England, Richard was chosen to fill a vacancy in the throne which had not yet taken place(38). Duke Richard fell at Wakefield; in the Yorkist reading of the Law the Crown was presently forfeited by Henry, and Edward, the heir of York, had his claim acknowledged by a show of popular election which carries us back to far earlier times. The claim of Richard the Third, whatever we make of it on other grounds, was acknowledged in the like sort by what had at least the semblance of a popular Assembly(39).