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We find by the formulary of Pepin's coronation that Charles and Carloman were also anointed, [120] and blessed, and that the French nobility bound themselves, on pain of interdiction and excommunication, never to choose a prince of another family. [121]

It appears by the wills of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnaire, that the Franks made a choice among the king's children, which agrees with the above-mentioned clause. And when the empire was transferred from Charlemagne's family, the election, which before had been restricted and conditional, became pure and simple, so that the ancient constitution was departed from.

Pepin, perceiving himself near his end, assembled the lords, both temporal and spiritual, at St. Denis, and divided his kingdom between his two sons, Charles and Carloman. [122] We have not the acts of this assembly, but we find what was there transacted in the author of the ancient historical collection, published by Canisius, and in the writer of the annals of Metz, [123] according to the observation of Baluzius. [124] Here I meet with two things in some measure contradictory; that he made this division with the consent of the nobility, and afterwards that he made it by his paternal authority. This proves what I said, that the people's right in the second race was to choose in the same family; it was, properly speaking, rather a right of exclusion than that of election.

This kind of elective right is confirmed by the records of the second race. Such is this capitulary of the division of the empire made by Charlemagne among his three children, in which, after settling their shares, he says, [125] "That if one of the three brothers happens to have a son, such as the people shall be willing to choose as a fit person to succeed to his father's kingdom, his uncles shall consent to it."

This same regulation is to be met with in the partition which Louis the Debonnaire made among his three children, Pepin, Louis, and Charles, in the year 837, at the assembly of Aix-la-Chapelle; [126] and likewise in another partition, made twenty years before, by the same emperor, in favour of Lotharius, Pepin, and Louis. [127] We may likewise see the oath which Louis the Stammerer took at Compigne at his coronation. "I, Louis, by the divine mercy, and the people's election, appointed king, do promise" [128] ... What I say is confirmed by the acts of the Council of Valence, held in the year 890, for the election of Louis, son of Bo-on, to the kingdom of Arles. [129] Louis was there elected, and the principal reason they gave for choosing him is that he was of the imperial family, [130] that Charles the Fat had conferred upon him the dignity of king, and that the Emperor Arnold had invested him by the sceptre, and by the ministry of his ambassadors. The kingdom of Arles, like the other dismembered or dependent kingdoms of Charlemagne, was elective and hereditary.