II. MEDLEVAL EUROPEAN LAW. The early German law of inheritance, with the Roman, was based on the family, but it gave no such preference to kinship in the male line, except as regarded succession to real property. As re garded such property, however, a preference not only of the male line over the female, but of male heirs over female, is visible in the earliest written laws; and this preference was empha sized and made general in mediaeval Europe by the development of the feudal system. in Ger man law there appeared also a distinction be tween sword-goods and spindle-goods, i.e. between things used by men and things used by women, and a tendency to prefer male heirs as regarded sword-goods and female as regarded spindle goods. Another German idea was that. when the nearest heirs were of the half blood, property that had come to the decedent from the father's side should go to the paternal relatives, while property that had come from the mother's side should go to the maternal relatives ('paterna paternis. materna maternis;' in Spanish law, Ironcalidad'), Sporadically manifested, more over, was a disinclination to allow property to ascend, with resultant rules preferring brothers and sisters and their descendants to parents.
As between collaterals rights of succession at German law did not depend wholly on nearness of kinship. Descendants of a nearer common ancestor were regularly preferred to descendants of a more remote common ancestor. Inheritance vested (1) in descendants of the decedent ; (2) in descendants of his parents; (3) in descendants of his grandparents; (4) in descendants of his great-grandparents, and so on. Within each such group the nearest of kin took the inheri tance. This is described by modern writers as the 'lineal-gradual' or 'parentela' system. Coupled with a preference of the male line and of males within that line it became the (original) feudal law of succession, and (with preference of the eldest male added) it determined the English law of inheritance of real property.