primogeniture (primojenitur)

[= F. primogéniture = Pr. Sp. Pg. It. primogenitura, neut. pl. of primogenit us, first-born, Aristo dem us died leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles; their mother refusing to determine which had the right of primogeniture , it was agreed that both should succeed to the crown with equal authority. J. Adams , Works, IV. 549. 2. Descent to the eldest son; the principle or right by which (under the Norman law introduced into England) the oldest son of a family succeeds to the father's real estate in preference to, and to the absolute exclusion of, the younger sons and daughters. The ancient customs of gavelkind and borough-English form exceptions to the general rule of law as to primogeniture. (See gavelkind and borough - English.) In the modified form of the law of primogeniture now existing in England, the law, if left to operate, carries the land of a person dying to male heirs singly, in succe ion preferring the eldest, but to female heirs equally in common, and carries personalty to wife and children with no preference for the eldest son. He was the first-born of the Almighty, and so, by the title of primogeniture, heir of all things. South , Sermons, IV. x. The abolition of primogeniture , and equal partition of inheritances, removed the feudal and unmatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all agrarian laws. Jefferson, Autobiog., p. 40. Primogeniture , as we know it in our law, had rather a political than a civil origin, and comes from the authority of the feudal lord and probably from that of the tribal chief; but here and there on the Continent there ar of it as a civil institution, and in such cases the succe ion of the eldest son does not exclude provision for the younger sons by what are called appanages. are traces Maine , Early Law and Custom, p. 261. Representative primogeniture, the rule of feudal in her it ance by which the i ue of a deceased child were regarded as standing in the place of that child, subject to the same preference of males over females among them, and of elder over younger males among them, as obtained among children inheriting directly: so that, if an elder son died leaving sons and daughters, the eldest of the sons would take what his father, if living, would have taken. primogeniture ship (pri-mo-jen'i-tur-ship), n. [ By the aristocratical law of primogeniture ship in a family of six children, five are exposed. Aristocracy has never but one child. Burke , Appeal to the Old Whigs.