ABSTRACT
T H E extinction of the old national dynasty wi th Andrew Ill 's death altered its conditions of existence for the Hungarian state. Under its own interpretation of the position, the right of electing its new king had now reverted to the nation, whose freedom of choice was in theory unlimited; there was no theoretical bar to its setting one of its own members over i t . But a firmly-implanted European usage had by this time come to l imit the enjoyment of royal dignity to those who could show some hereditary title to i t , most of these persons belonging to a small clique - into which the Arpads themselves had levered themselves - of interrelated families of, as i t were, professional royalties. It would have required a strong man, wi th a united nation behind him, to defy a well-supported claim from a member of one of these families, and the Hungarians, too, admitted the compulsive virtue of the blood-tie. They themselves confined their search to persons in whose veins the blood of the Arpads ran, at least through some maternal forbear, who could continue the line - the line, not an individual, for the choice once made, the principle of legitimacy came into operation again; i t was the singular misfortune of the country that for over two centuries after 1301, only one king died leaving behind him legitimate male issue. This meant that except in the one case in question, and in the two others where peculiar circumstances resulted, after all, in the election of a national king, their chosen ruler always came from some foreign, and foreign-based, dynasty. In fact, until the sixteenth century, when the Crown became permanently vested in the Habsburg dynasty, i t was worn
(transitory and disputed cases apart) by two Angevins, one Luxemburger, one Habsburg and three Jagiellos; wi th , intervening, two national kings, one of whom ruled only in part of the country.
