PRIMOGENITURE (ML. primogenitura, from Lat. primogenita, rights of the first born, nen. p]. of primoycnit us. from prim us, first genitus. p.p. of giancr,, to produce). In the law of inheritance. the right of the first born to take by descent the real property of a deceased ancestor, to the exclusion of a]] others of equal degree of consanguinity. The term has sometimes been employed in a wider sense to describe any priority which, in various legal systems, the law has accorded to the first horn, thus comprehend ing the birth-right of the Hebrew and of Hindu law (where that belonged, as was not always the case, to the eldest son), which was at the most a right to a double portion of the inheri tance, as well as the right of the eldest of the heirs in certain forms of Anglo-Saxon tenure to the chief house (mansio) of the ancestor. But the term is in modern law usually restricted to the persistent rule of inheritance which has for centuries maintained itself in our common-law system, whereby the eldest son of his issue, or, failing lineal descendants, the eldest male in the next degree of consanguinity, takes all the real estate of which his ancestor (lied seised and in testate. to the exelu-.ion of all female and of
junior male dependants of equal degree. Al though not confined to lineal descendants, but comprehending the remotest degrees of consan guinity, the principle of primogeniture has never in the common law of land been applied to female heirs, who have, whether lineally or col laterally descended from their common ancestor, always been permitted, in default of male heirs. to share the inheritance equally.
This rule of descent, due, in its origin, to the exigencies of the feudal system, was formerly common to feudal Europe. hut it has long since disappeared everywhere hilt in England. It has not generally been adopted in the English-speak ing colonies of Britain, and though introduced with the rest of the eommon-law system into the American colonies, it was abrogated and aban doned by them at an early period in their history. See DESCENT: txrtERIT.1NCE. Con,n it Ma ine, Ancient Lou'. and id., Early History of Institu tions.