Her eldest son, the Dauphin, would therefore, in the regular course of things, have been her brother's successor.

But she had, at the time of her marriage, renounced, for herself and her posterity, all pretensions to the Spanish crown.
To that renunciation her husband had assented.

It had been made an article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees.

The Pope had been requested to give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the peace of Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every thing that could bind a gentleman, a king, and a Christian, by his honour, by his royal word, by the canon of the Mass, by the Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that he would hold the renunciation sacred.

[11] The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne, daughter of Philip the Third, and aunt of Charles the Second, and could not therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be regarded, come into competition with the claim of the Dauphin.