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Updated: June 13, 2025
In spite of the disastrous failure of his crusading expeditions, the aggrandisement of the crown continued, especially under Philip the Fair; but the failure of the direct heirs after the successive reigns of his three sons placed Philip of Valois on the throne according to the "Salic" law of succession in 1328.
The Salic law of France, which barred females from the right of succession, and in virtue of which Philip of Valois succeeded to the throne instead of King Edward, certainly did not obtain in Brittany.
Secondly, the English would not allow Flanders whose manufacturing towns, as Ghent and Bruges, were the best customers for their wool to pass under French control. The French stood by the "Salic law," but a much stronger feeling was their determination not to be ruled by an Englishman.
The evil and the peril became far greater still when, in the fourteenth century, there arose between France and England, between Philip de Valois and Edward III., a question touching the succession to the throne of France and the application or negation of the Salic law.
This involved the setting aside of the Salic law of succession, and an unmistakable Spanish ascendancy, which no conceivable marriage could make satisfactory to any one but Philip. Thus Elizabeth still found herself compelled to give Henry material assistance, and the English contingent before Rouen, which the French King was seeking to capture in the latter part of 1591, was commanded by Essex.
The King of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England," and thenceforth took the title of King of France. The sea fight of Sluys began the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It is also memorable as England's first great naval victory. The origin of the war lay in the Salic Law, which excludes women from the throne of France.
Hitherto, though no children seemed likely to be born to him, Henri III. was young and might live long, and his brother was there as his heir. Now, Henri III. was the last Prince of the Valois, and Henri of Navarre in hereditary succession was heir presumptive to the throne, unless the Salic law were to be set aside.
Between the fifth and the ninth centuries we get the Visigothic, Burgundian, Salic, Ripuarian, Alemannic, Lombardian, Bavarian, Frisian, Saxon, and Thuringian law books. They are written in medieval Latin and are not elaborated on a scientific basis.
Charles II. Duc de Lorraine, who had married Claude, younger daughter of Henri IL, and who was therefore brother-in-law to Henri III., set up a vague claim; the King of Spain, Philip II., thought that the Salic law had prevailed long enough in France, and that his own wife, the elder daughter of Henri III. had the best claim to the throne; the Guises, though their head was gone, still hoping for the crown, proclaimed their sham-king, the Cardinal de Bourbon, as Charles X., and intrigued behind the shadow of his name.
That of Henry was certainly most unreasonable. Edward had maintained that though the Salic Law, which governed the succession in France, excluded females from the throne, it did not exclude their male descendants. On this theory Edward himself was doubtless the true heir to the French monarchy.
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