rance, however, had no
serious doubts as to their policy. The inadmissibility of a female
ruler had already been determined at the accession of both Philip V.
and Charles IV., and it was clear that the nearest male heir was
Philip, Count of Valois, who had recently succeeded to the great
appanage left vacant by the death in 1325 of his father, Charles of
Valois, the inveterate enemy of the English. As the next representative
of the male line, the French at once recognised Philip of Valois as
regent. When his cousin's widow gave birth to a daughter, the regent
was proclaimed as King Philip VI. without either delay or hesitation.
Thus the house of Valois occupied the throne of France in the place of
the direct Capetian line in which son had succeeded father since the
days of Hugh Capet.

Even Isabella and Mortimer protested against the succession of Philip
of Valois. Admitted that the exclusion of women from the monarchy was
already established by two precedents, could it not be plausibly argued
that a woman, incapable herself of reigning, might form "the bridge and
plank"[1] (as a contemporary put it) by which her sons might step into
the rights of their ancestors? Strange as such a conception seems to
our ideas, it was not unfamiliar to the jurists of that day. It was in
this fashion that the Capetian house claimed its boasted descent and
continuity from the race of Charlemagne. Such a principle was actually
the law in some parts of France, and it was a matter of every-day
occurrence in the Parisis to transmit male fiefs to the sons of
heiresses, themselves incapable of succession. Edward, as the son of
Charles IV.'s sister, was nearer of kin to his uncle than Philip, the
son of Charles's uncle. Surely a man's nephew had a better right to his
succession than his first cousin could ever claim? From the purely
juridical point of view, the claim put forward by Isabella on her son's
behalf was not only plausible but strong.

[1] Viollet, _Hist. des Institutions politiques et
administratives de la France_, ii., 74, from a MS. source. See
also Viollet, _Comment les Femmes ont ete exclues en France de
la Succession a la Couronne_, in _Mem. de l'Acad. des
Inscriptions_, xxxiv., pt. ii. (1893).

Happily for France, the magnates of the realm dealt with the succession
question as statesmen and not as lawyers. A later age imagined that the
French barons brought forward a text of the law of the Salian Pranks,