Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/14

14 as wholly without warrant, and opposed to patent facts.

Here let me premise that our earlier statutes and Magna. Charta were embodied in Latin. I need hardly add that the word vir indicates sex, but that homo is employed to signify the human species in contradistinction to the brutes. The genus homo applies to either and to both sexes. When Terence says Homo sum humani nihil, &c, it is not in the sense of being a male, but of being human. Hominum Salvator—pater hominum deorumque are titles which extend to the whole race, and are not restricted to either gender. In so far as English law is involved, Lord Coke (2 Inst., f. 45) expressly rules that the term homo employed throughout Magna Charta has been always held to "extend to both sexes." When the sign of manhood is to be indicated, it is called toga virilis, not toga humana. From this premiss [sic] let the examination of the law start. The first glimpse presented to us in this connection is 20th Henry III., cap. 10, wherein liberi homines and liberi tenenies, the owners of freeholds, were the suitors at the county courts. On the occasion of the election of knights of the shire all suitors were summoned to the county court, and the majority "on the view" returned the member. It is not denied that women were freeholders, and as such suitors, or that the suitors were the electors. The 53rd Henry III., c. 10, in prescribing who are to attend the sheriff at his courts, exempts only "religious men and women," and then only when they are not required for some other cause. Prynne, in his "Parliamenta Rediviva," refers to "The attornies of the Archbishop of York and of sundry earles, lords, nobles, and some ladies, who were annual suitors to the county court of Yorkshire, being the sole electors of the knights, and sealing their indentures, witness the first indenture for this county." Among these suitors is named Lucy Countess of Kent. In the Parliament of 2nd Henry V. Margaret Vavasour (not, observe, a feme sole) is a party to a similar indenture, and Mrs. Copley in the reign of Edward YI. attests a third. From this premiss, that the suitors or freeholders—liberi tenentes—in the county courts, were the electors of the knights of the shire, legislation proceeds from the reign of Henry III., to the 7th Henry IV., c. 15, which provides that "all they that be there present, as well suitors duly summoned for the same cause, as other &hellip; shall