Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/237

 Ch. 14. the relations of his father's mother, Cecilia Kempe, hall for the ame reaon never be admitted, but only thoe of his father's father. This is alo the rule of the French law, which is derived from the ame feodal fountain.

we may oberve, that, o far as the feud is really antiquum, the law traces it back, and will not uffer any to inherit but the blood of thoe ancetors, from whom the feud was conveyed to the late proprietor. But when, through length of time, it can trace it no farther; as if it be not known whether his grandfather, George Stiles, inherited it from his father Walter Stiles, or his mother Chritian Smith; or if it appear that his grandfather was the firt grantee, and o took it (by the general law) as a feud of indefinite antiquity; in either of thee caes the law admits the decendants of any ancetor of George Stiles, either paternal or maternal, to be in their due order the heirs to John Stiles of this etate: becaue in the firt cae it is really uncertain, and in the econd cae it is uppoed to be uncertain, whether the grandfather derived his title from the part of his father or his mother.

then is the great and general principle, upon which the law of collateral inheritances depends; that, upon failure of iue in the lat proprietor, the etate hall decend to the blood of the firt purchaor; or, that it hall reult back to the heirs of the body of that ancetor, from whom it either really has, or is uppoed by fiction of law to have, originally decended: according to the rule laid down in the yearbooks, Fitzherbert , Brook , and Hale ; "that he who would have been heir to the father of the deceaed" (and, of coure, to the mother, or any other purchaing ancetor) "hall alo be heir to the on."

remaining rules are only rules of evidence, calculated to invetigate who that purchaing ancetor was; which, in feudis Rh