the Bordelais, Dax and the diocese of Dax, and Bayonne and its territory.  But in no place did the boundaries go very far inland.  Along the Dordogne, Libourne and Saint-Emilion were the easternmost English towns.  Up the Garonne, the French were in possession of Langon, while, in the valley of the Adour, Saint-Sever, perched on its upland rock, was the landward outpost of the diminished Gascon duchy.  In the east of the Agenais the two chatellenies of Penne and Puymirol formed a little enclave of ducal territory which extended from the Lot to the Garonne.  But this second fragment of the ancient duchy was of no military and little commercial value, being commanded on all sides by the possessions of the French king.  Moreover, the fiefs dependent on the Gascon duchy had fallen away with the attenuation of the duke’s domain.  In particular the viscounty of Bearn, now held by the Count of Foix, repudiated all allegiance to its English overlord.  Even a thoroughly Gascon seigneur, such as the lord of Albret, was wavering in his fidelity to his duke.  It was no longer safe for Gascons to risk the hostility of the king of the French.

Within a year of the treaty of Paris, the death of Charles IV. further complicated Anglo-French relations.  Like his brothers, Louis X. and Philip V., Charles the Fair left no male issue; but the pregnancy of his queen prevented the settlement of the succession being completed immediately after his decease.  The barons of France, 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