kind of inheritance, whereof you shall read more in his proper place.

4 GRAY, CAS. PROP., 9. Canons of Descent.-1. Inheritances shall lineally descend to the issue of the person who last died actually seised in infinitum, but shall never lineally ascend.

2. The male issue shall be admitted before the female. 3. Where there are two or more males in equal degree, the eldest only shall inherit, but the females all together.

4. The lineal descendants, in infinitum, of any person deceased shall represent their ancestor; that is, shall stand in the same place as the person himself would have done had he been living.

5. On failure of lineal descendants, or issue, of the person last seised, the inheritance shall descend to his collateral relations, being of the blood of the first purchaser; subject to the three preceding rules.

6. The collateral heir of the person last seised must be his next collateral kinsman of the whole blood.

7. In collateral inheritances the male stocks shall be preferred to the female (that is, kindred derived from the blood of the male ancestors, however remote, shall be admitted before those from the blood of the female, however near); unless where the lands have, in fact, descended from a female.

2 BL. COм., 202-207. Consanguinity, or kindred, is defined by the writers on these subjects to be "vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium:" the connection

1 These canons are taken from Blackstone. They have been changed in some important respects by the Inheritance Act (3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 106). The 2d, 3d, 4th, and 7th canons remain unaltered. The 1st has been changed by deriving the descent from the last purchaser instead of the person last actually seised, and by admitting lineal ancestors in default of lineal descendants. This latter amendment alters the 5th canon also by preferring lineal ancestors over collaterals. The 6th canon has been changed by admitting the half-blood next after the whole blood in the same degree. --ED.

or relation of persons descended from the same stock or This consanguinity is either lineal or

common ancestor.

collateral.

Lineal consanguinity is that which subsists between persons, of whom one is descended in a direct line from the other, as between John Stiles and his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so upwards in the direct ascending line; or between John Stiles and his son, grandson, greatgrandson, and so downwards in the direct descending line. Every generation, in this lineal direct consanguinity, constitutes a different degree, reckoning either upwards or downwards the father of John Stiles is related to him in the first degree, and so likewise is his son; his grandsire and grandson in the second; his great-grandsire and greatgrandson in the third. This is the only natural way of reckoning the degrees in the direct line, and therefore universally obtains, as well in the civil and canon as in the common law. .

Collateral kindred answers to the same description: collateral relations agreeing with the lineal in this, that they descend from the same stock or ancestor; but differing in this, that they do not descend one from the other. Collateral kinsmen are such then as lineally spring from one and the same ancestor, who is the stirps, or root, the stipes, trunk, or common stock, from whence these relations are branched out. As if John Stiles hath two sons, who have each a numerous issue; both these issues are lineally descended from John Stiles as their common ancestor; and they are collateral kinsmen to each other, because they are all descended from this common ancestor, and all have a portion of his blood in their veins, which denominates them consanguineos.

The method of computing these degrees in the canon law which our law has adopted, is as follows: we begin at the common ancestor, and reckon downwards: and in whatsoever degree the two persons, or the most remote of them, is distant from the common ancestor, that is the degree in

which they are related to each other. Thus Titius and his. brother are related in the first degree; for from the father to each of them is counted only one; Titius and his nephew are related in the second degree; for the nephew is two degrees removed from the common ancestor; viz., his own grandfather, the father of Titius.

4 KENT. COM., 374. The English law of descents is governed by a number of rules, or canons of inheritance, which have been established for ages, and have regulated the transmission of the estate from the ancestor to the heir, in so clear and decided a manner as to preclude all uncertainty as to the course which the descent is to take. But, in these United States the English common law of descents, in its most essential features, has been universally rejected, and each State has established a law of descents for itself. The laws of the individual States may agree in their great outlines, but they differ exceedingly in the details. There is no entire, though there is an essential uniformity on this subject.1

In general it may be said that in the United States descent is traced neither from the person last actually seised, nor from the last purchaser, but from the person last entitled; that primogeniture and the preference of the male over the female descendant has been abolished, all the children or heirs of the same degree, male and female, being entitled to share equally in the inheritance. Representation, however, has been retained in most of the States (see canon 4). Generally, also, the disability of the half-blood has been wholly or partially removed, and ancestors (at least the father and mother) admitted after the lineal descendants and before the collaterals. Illegitimacy is still a bar, though in some of the States bastards inherit from the mother, and in most of the States they become legitimate upon the intermarriage of their parents (N. Y. Laws, 1896, c. 272, § 18).-ED.

CHAPTER II.

DISSEISIN.

BRACTON, 162, 163. But if a disseysine has been made in any of the above ways, the first and principal remedy is of this kind, namely, that he who has been disseysed may reject the spoiler by his own strength if he can, or by strength. which he has called in or recalled, provided no interval has elapsed, the disseysine or misdeed being flagrant. But if he can in no way expel him, he must have recourse to the power of a superior that he may be allowed to acquire it peaceably and to use it quietly. Forthwith to repel "force by force" is to do so as soon as it can be known that force has been used, before that he, against whom it has been used, has betaken himself to a contrary act. . . But we must see what is meant by the term "forthwith," and within what time. But the time is not defined, but it is presumed that he ought to have so much time, as he would have if he were impleaded respecting the property, namely, fifteen days, which right, however, he does not enjoy at present. We must likewise see whether the person disseysed was present or absent at the time of the disseysine, or whether he was himself personally ejected, or his agent or his household, or whilst he was absent another person entered into his possession then vacant. I mean vacant corporeally, although not mentally. But if he was present at the time of the disseysine, then let him expel the disseysor immediately and on the same day, if he can. . . . But if he has not chosen such a way, let him do on the morrow or on the third or the fourth day or further with due continuation, what he ought to have done on the first day : because if he could not reject him on the first day, he may be able on the morrow

to rally his forces, to collect arms, and to invoke the aid of friends; but if he has waited for a long time, he seems thereby to dissemble the injury, and thereby altogether to blot it out. . . . But if he has been absent from whatever necessary cause of common business, or of a journey, or from any other cause, it will be requisite to distinguish the distance of places and the times, or the diligence or the negligence of the person disseysed, according as he has been near in the same county, or far off in another county, or elsewhere, provided he is within the realm. Let “far” and "further" be distinguished, at what time he could have known concerning disseysine, and not the time at which he did know it, and in which case reasonable days' journeys are to be computed for him in coming, so that, reasonable delays having been allowed to him, within the fourth day or further upon special cause as above explained he may expel the disseysor, which will be sufficiently immediate, since time does not run against him except from the time of his knowledge, and from which after knowledge he could come conveniently.

STAT. 3 EDW. I. (1275), c. 39. And forasmuch as it is long Time passed since the Writs undernamed were limited; it is provided, That in conveighing a Descent in a Writ of Right, none shall presume to declare of the Seisin of his Ancestor further, or beyond the time of King Richard, Uncle to King Henry, Father to the King that now is; and that a Writ of Novel disseisin, of Partition, which is called Nuper obiit, have their Limitation since the first Voyage of King Henry, Father to the King that now is, into Gascoin. And that Writs of Mortdancestor, of Cosinage, of Aiel, of Entry, and of Nativis, have their Limitation from the Coronation of the same King Henry, and not before. Nevertheless all Writs purchased now by themselves or to be purchased between this and the Feast of St. John, for one Year compleat, shall be pleaded from as long Time as heretofore they have been used to be pleaded.