Primogeniture

7 Key excerpts on "Primogeniture"

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  Entrenchment

  Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies

  • Paul Starr(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Primogeniture is not the only form of unigeniture, that is, inheritance by a single heir. The rule in some societies has favored the youngest child (ultimogeni-ture) or called upon a ruler or testator to designate one successor or heir. Primogeniture may result from law, custom, or private choice. All three were involved in Britain’s system of patrimonial inheri-tance, the remnants of which lasted into the early twentieth century. Inheritance law in Britain was divided into two domains: real prop-erty (land, buildings, and other improvements) and movables or personalty (all other possessions, including liquid investments), a di-vision that roughly corresponds to the distinction between immo-bile and mobile capital. As a legal rule, Primogeniture applied only to real property, and it served as a default—that is, it was the rule when there was no will (intestacy) or wherever a will was ambiguous about realty. In cases of intestacy, the law called for the eldest son to receive all the real property and for the movables to be split equally among all the decedent’s children. 7 Aristocracy and Inherited Wealth 39 But since those with great wealth usually did not die without a will, the more important British legal institutions for inheritance were entails and family settlements. Once land was entailed, a later will could not reverse it; entailment was a strong entrenchment de-vice. Family settlements were agreements, usually drawn up at the marriage of the eldest son, accomplishing the purposes of entail while also setting aside resources for a surviving spouse and younger siblings. Although these arrangements overwhelmingly favored male heirs, they did not always prevent a daughter from inheriting. Where real property passed to a daughter, however, control typically resided with her husband. As “femmes covert,” married women had no independent property rights.

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  Transregional and Transnational Families in Europe and Beyond

  Experiences Since the Middle Ages

  • Christopher H. Johnson, David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, Francesca Trivellato(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  This gender-specific practice, which was in evidence in princely society (not only) of the Holy Roman Empire beginning in the late Mid-dle Ages, is widely considered to be the basis for the establishment of a dynasty and hence for the origin of modern European statehood. 2 As has recently been argued, this approach favors a view of society in which the political and societal functions of kinship are continuously underval-ued, while state institutions are given more and more significance and kinship “is the functional predecessor of almost everything, but never a constructive factor of the emergence of anything.” 3 Now, this perspective on modern state and nation building has been neither historically nor historiographically limited to purely political and social aspects of power. Rather, it has been accompanied by very diverse discourses in which the so-called primogenitus, the first-born son, was designed and designated as the sole legal successor to power and preferred heir. This historical production process of the “one and only,” which can be traced in historiographical, genealogical, and juridical writ-ings up to the turn of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, has been transported into historical and politico-historical writings of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and to some extent even of the early twenty-first century. 4 The talk of Aussterben eines Geschlechtes (extinction of a dynasty), prevalent in the traditional historical auxiliary sciences (for example, in genealogy) refers in historical texts about the early modern noble and ruling houses to the failure of a male heir and characterizes this extinction as a break in the (male) blood-related, tra-ditional lineage. This view forms the general, gender-specific frame of reference for an exclusive discourse, which seems to privilege a single male heir over his brothers and sisters in the context of authority and property transfer in the early modern period.

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  Dynasties

  A Global History of Power, 1300–1800

  • Jeroen Duindam(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  212 In eighteenth-century Russia as well as in Qing China, emperors restated their personal right to designate their successors, whether or not they were first sons. The wish of the dying ruler could be undone by the power of a regent or an assembly; each of these could override ingrained preferences for pri- mogeniture or ultimogeniture. It is striking how easily numerous carefully stated principles could be pushed aside by unexpected contingencies demanding ad hoc solutions. Positive rules defining ideal candidates were easier to ignore than prohibitions, leaving open many choices while barring only some. 213 In Europe heredity and Primogeniture emerged late and hesitantly. Roman and Byzantine imperial dignity had included a strong element of family”: law and familial order in the Romanov dynasty’, Russian History, 37/4 (2010), 389–411. 211 Wortman, ‘Representation of dynasty’, 265–6, 281. 212 Elliott, Qianlong, 2; Chia Ning, ‘Qingchao Huangwei Jicheng Zhidu; The Institution of Qing Throne Succession (review)’, China Review International, 14/1 (2007), 280–8. 213 Suwannathat-Pian, ‘Thrones, claimants, rulers and rules’, 9. 144 Dynasty: reproduction and succession personal achievement and acclamation, with numerous military leaders being ‘raised on a shield’ to signal their elevation. 214 The long list of Byzantine emperors reigning between 395 and 1453 includes only three dynasties able to maintain their hold on the throne for more than a century. 215 Most forms of kingship in Europe, whether or not they were vested in one particular family, had once combined elements of hereditary right, personal suitability, and some form of election by an assembly of peers. 216 By the end of the early modern age, in most realms only a ritual acclamation by peers embedded in the coronation ceremony still pointed to these earlier forms.

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  Out of Love for My Kin

  Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000–1200

  • Amy Livingstone(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  Primogeniture and patrilineage were indeed options for inheritance modes and family organization available to the nobility in the lands of the Loire, but they were not the dominant hues. Forty-four percent of acts in the charter database were initiated by males alone. But when the consent and participation of family members are figured in, this drops to 22 percent. Thus about one in five or one in four aristocratic families assumed a more rigid linear form and invested heavily in the eldest male child. However, when considered alongside collective inheritance, which occurred at a rate of 15 percent, inheritance by an eldest son was only slightly more frequent than collective inheritance (approximately one in three families in comparison with between one in either four or five).

  One of the features of twelfth-century charters is an increase in the use of the term primogenitus and like terms to designate firstborn sons and daughters. At first glance, this could be indicative of a revolution in family structure and definitive evidence of primogenitary inheritance. But does the increased interest in birth order necessarily mean that inheritance practices conformed to Primogeniture? Specifically, did the designation of the firstborn mean that other siblings no longer exercised a right to family lands or had status as potential heirs? Furthermore, was the use of such designators or an interest in birth order a result of a change in family patterns or simply a device used to clarify which child was referenced? While the use of such terms did increase in the twelfth century, the frequency of birth-order designators still occurred in the vast minority of acts (2.4 percent). Analysis of the charters themselves cautions against rushing to the conclusion that interest in birth order was consonant with Primogeniture or patrilineage, as the following examples demonstrate.

  Early in the twelfth century, William of Castellaria made a gift to the monks of St. Père for the soul of his son Radulf. His primogenitus, Gaufred, consented to the gift and acted with his father in promising to defend the gift against all claims. This would seem to be definitive evidence of primogenitary inheritance and the power of the firstborn son. Yet William’s other three sons also consented to the gift, so their rights and claims to family land had not been superseded by their eldest brother.79 This family was concerned with birth order, however, for in addition to identifying the primogenitus, the charter designates William’s son Hugh the “third son.” Interest in birth order also applied to daughters. Daniel of La Ferté’s wife is clearly designated as primogenita in their dispute with the monks, indicating that birth order was important to daughters’ place in the family as well as sons’.80 Did Daniel make his claim because he believed that his wife, as firstborn, had some particular or stronger right to the property? The chronicle evidence contains examples of just such motivations for disputes. Lambert of Ardres, for example, records a contestation over Guines in the twelfth century based on the assertion that the rights of the eldest daughter were stronger than those of her younger siblings.81 In the case of Daniel La Ferté and his wife, however, her younger siblings still had a right to the patrimony. Her sister and her husband made a gift to the church and witnessed the couple’s quitclaim.82

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  Rethinking the Foundations

  Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible. Essays in Honour of John Van Seters

  • Steven L. McKenzie, Thomas Römer, Steven L. McKenzie, Thomas Römer(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  The revocation of Primogeniture can represent a deliberate act by Israelite and Judahite leaders in determining inheritance and succession. It may also repre-sent divine intervention. Selectively drawing upon older stories of the ances-tral period and the monarchy, the Chronicler fashions a pattern of divine election that disregards Primogeniture. The unexpected becomes the expected. 126 Gary Ν. Knoppers What is fairly rare in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History be-comes more of a commonplace in Chronicles. Authorial stance is inevitably linked to historical and social circum-stances. The Chronicler lives at a time in which the Judean community, as a younger sibling, saw itself as the beneficiary of a heritage in which primogeni-ture was not an iron law 47 . Indeed, the survival of Yehud, and the legacy of the Davidic dynasty within it, testifies to the enduring importance of the deity's past choices. Decoupling firstborn status from succession and primacy in inheritance is, therefore, not an isolated or odd phenomenon in Chronicles, but rather a familiar feature of the divine economy. 47 Contra R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 1981, 6.

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  Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration

  • John Locke, Ian Shapiro(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  And thus we see the succession of crowns, in several countries, places it on different heads, and he comes by right of succession to be a prince in one place, who would be a subject in another. § 95. If God, by his positive grant and revealed declaration, first gave rule and dominion to any man, he that will claim by that title, must have the same positive grant of God for his succession : for if that has not directed the course of its descent and conveyance down to others, nobody can succeed to this title of the first ruler. Children have no right of inheritance to this ; and Primogeniture can lay no claim to it, unless God, the Author of this constitution, hath so ordained it. Thus we see the pretensions of Saul’s family, who received his crown from the immediate appointment of God, ended with his reign ; and David, by the same title that Saul reigned, viz. God’s appointment, succeeded in his throne, to the exclusion of Jonathan, First Treatise 61 and all pretensions of paternal inheritance : and if Solomon had a right to succeed his father, it must be by some other title than that of Primogeniture. A cadet, or sister’s son, must have the preference in succession, if he has the same title the first lawful prince had : and in dominion that has its founda-tion only in the positive appointment of God himself, Benjamin, the young-est, must have the inheritance of the crown, if God so direct, as well as one of that tribe had the first possession. § 96. If paternal right, the act of begetting, give a man rule and domin-ion, inheritance or Primogeniture can give no title ; for he that cannot suc-ceed to his father’s title, which was begetting, cannot succeed to that power over his brethren, which his father had by paternal right over them. But of this I shall have occasion to say more in another place.

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  Studies in Biblical Law

  From the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls

  • Gershon Brin(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • Sheffield Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  It would seem to follow from what is stated there that this was a polemic against known practices in the society. According to these customs, the father acted against the laws of inheritance, which required that he prefer the first-born, in that he preferred other sons over the first-born. The tendency of this law was to limit the ability of the father to engage in manipula-tions intended to get around the accepted order. I have already explained 51 that the instruction not to deviate from the law stems from the understanding in Israel of the birthright as having a sacred character. 49. See W.F. Arndt, Luke, p. 315. 50. On extra-biblical material concerning methods of calculation of the inheritance of the first-born, see Brin, 'The First-Bom in Israel', pp. 249-60. 51. See below, in section 4 of this chapter. 10. The Laws of Inheritance of the First-Born 251 Examination of biblical sources reveals 52 that the preference of another son over the first-born did occur in reality, and that the pre-ferred son enjoyed the privileges of the first-born, although not the actual title. The wording of the law in Deuteronomy 21 suggests that one must take note here of the relationship between inheritance based upon law and inheritance based upon the testament of the father. The present law does not deal at all with the question of discrimination or removal of an 'ordinary' son from the inheritance (nor does any other biblical text deal with this). 53 Its main concern is to protect the right of the first-born to a 'double portion'. We thus find that the first-born enjoys the 'double portion' in the case of intestate inheritance; the same is true with regard to the time of executing the will. The distinction between inheritance based upon law and inheritance based upon testament is felt particularly strongly in rabbinic law. In a case where there is no will, one follows the straightforward law.

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