of representation, as his heir at law. An heir therefore is he upon whom the law casts the estate immediately on the death of the ancestor: and an estate, so descending to the heir, is in law called the inheritance. of descents. The doctrine of descents, or law of inheritances in fee- of the doctrine simple, is a point of the highest importance; and is indeed the principal object of the laws of real property in England. All the rules relating to purchases, whereby the legal course of descents is broken and altered, perpetually refer to this settled law of inheritance, as a datum or first principle universally known, and upon which their subsequent limitations are to work. Thus, a gift in tail, or to a man and the heirs of his body, is a limitation that cannot be perfectly understood without a previous knowledge of the law of descents in fee-simple. One may well perceive that this is an estate confined in its descent to such heirs only of the donee, as have sprung or shall spring from his body; but who those heirs are, whether all his children both male and female, or the male only, and (among the males) whether the eldest, youngest, or other son alone, or all the sons together, shall be his heir; this is a point that we must result back to the standing law of descents in fee-simple to be informed of. *In order therefore to treat a matter of this universal con- [ sequence the more clearly, I shall endeavour to lay aside such matters as will only tend to breed embarrassment and confusion in our inquiries, and shall confine myself entirely to this one object. I shall therefore decline considering at present who are, and who are not, capable of being heirs; reserving that for the chapter of escheats. I shall also pass over the frequent division of descents in those by custom, statute, and common law: for descents by particular custom (3), as to all the sons in gavelkind, and to the youngest tition, or inclosure, by the effect of which the land shall become part of, or descendible with, other land acquired by descent. And by the statute of 4 & 5 Gul. IV. c. 23, the legal rights to trust property, accruing by escheat, either to the crown, to corporations, or to individual lords of manors, in consequence of the failure of heirs of the trustee or of his attainder, are subjected to the control of the Court (3) See ante, the notes to pp. 83, * 202 ] Of the several degrees of consanguinity. Consanguinity is either lineal or collateral. [* 203 ] Lineal consanguinity is that which subsists between persons of whom one is descended in a direct line from the other. in borough-english, have already been often (b) hinted at, and may also be incidentally touched upon again; but will not make a separate consideration by themselves, in a system so general as the present: and descents by statute, or fees-tail (4) per formam doni, in pursuance of the statute of Westminster the second, have also been already (c) copiously handled; and it has been seen that the descent in tail is restrained and regulated according to the words of the original donation, and does not entirely pursue the common law doctrine of inheritance; which, and which only, it will now be our business to explain. And, as this depends not a little on the nature of kindred, and the several degrees of consanguinity, it will be previously necessary to state, as briefly as possible, the true notion of this kindred or alliance in blood (d). Consanguinity, or kindred, is defined by the writers on these subjects to be "vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite "descendentium ;" the connexion or relation of persons descended from the same stock or common ancestor. This consanguinity is either lineal, or collateral (5). * Lineal consanguinity is that which subsists between persons, of whom one is descended in a direct line from the other, as between John Stiles (the propositus in the table of consanguinity) and his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so upwards in the direct ascending line; or between John Stiles and his son, grandson, great-grandson, 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 (b) See Vol. I. p. 74, 75; Vol. II. pag. 83, 85. (c) See pag. 112, &c. (d) For a fuller explanation of the doctrine of consanguinity, and the (4) See ante, the notes to pp. 110, 111, 112. (5) The reader will do well to examine the table of consanguinity inserted at the close of the third chapter of Watkins' Essay on the Law of De consequences resulting from a right apprehension of its nature, see An Essay on Collateral Consanguinity. (Law Tracts, Oxon. 1762, 8vo. or 1771, 4to.) scents, for a graphical illustration of this subject; and the whole essay will abundantly repay the trouble of perusal; though all Mr. Watkins' propo sitions may not be implicitly acceded to. are such as de the other, and common ances the second; his great-grandsire and great-grandson 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 (e), and canon (ƒ), as in the common law (g). The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain Lineal relations and obvious; but it is at the first view astonishing to con- scend one from sider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has, both from one within no very great number of degrees; and so many dif- tor. ferent bloods (h) is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate (i). This lineal consanguinity, |