SAL'IC LAW. The code known as the salic law is a collection of the popultir laws :of the Salle or Sagan Franks (see FRANKS) committed to writing in barbarous Latin in the 5th e.. while the people were yet heathens. There exist several texts of this code, end considerable obs•urity rests over its history. It relat„s principally to the compen sation and punishment of crimes, and there is a chapter Containing provisions regarding the snecession to what are called aerie lands, which seems to have been inserted at a later (bite. It is difficult to determine precisely what these lands were. The terra strikes was probably so from its being more especially attached to the sal or ball of the lord or proprietor derive • colic as applied La the people from the same word); it thus came to designate inherited land as opposed to property acquired otherwise. Al though the Frankish law did not in general exclude females, the succession to these Salle hand,:. whatever they were, was eonfined to males, probably from the importance
of seeming the military service of the chief proprietors. It was hut a doubtful analogy that led the ride of succession to SaLe lands to be extended to the succession to the French crown, and it seems to have been only in the 14th c, that the exclusion of females from the throne became an established principle. The accession of Philip the Long was probably the first Occasion on winch it received public sanction, and the fact that Edward III. rested his claim on female succession, doubtless led to that instance being as an unquestionable precedent for all future time.—See Hallam's Europe in the .Middle Ages (ch. ii. pt. 1, and notes); Guizot Essais sur l'Histoire de France, p 04.