Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/248

 234 mothers of John Stiles, are each in the ame degree of propinquity; in the third degree, the repective iues of Walter and Chritian Stiles, of Luke and Frances Kempe, of Herbert and Hannah Baker, and of James and Emma Thorpe, are (upon the extinction of the two inferior degrees) all equally entitled to call themelves the next kindred of the whole blood to John Stiles. To which therefore of thee ancetors mut we firt reort, in order to find out decendants to be preferably called to the inheritance? In anwer to this, and to avoid the confuion and uncertainty that mut arie between the everal tocks, wherein the purchaing ancetor may be fought for,

VII. eventh and lat rule or canon is, that in collateral inheritances the male tocks hall be preferred to the female; (that is, kindred derived from the blood of the male ancetors hall be admitted before thoe from the blood of the female) — unles where the lands have, in fact, decended from a female.

the relations on the father's ide are admitted in infinitum, before thoe on the mother's ide are admitted at all ; and the relations of the father's father, before thoe of the father's mother; and o on. And in this the Englih law is not ingular, but warranted by the examples of the Hebrew and Athenian laws, as tated by Selden, and Petit ; though among the Greeks, in the time of Heiod , when a man died without wife or children, all his kindred (without any ditinction) divided his etate among them. It is likewie warranted by the example of the Roman laws; wherein the agnati, or relations by the father, were preferred to the cognati, or relations by the mother, till the edict of the emperor Jutinian abolihed all ditinction between them. It is alo conformable to the cutomary law of Normandy, which indeed in mot repects agrees with our law of inheritance. Rh