the relations of his father's mother, Cecilia Kempe, ſhall for the ſame reaſon never be admitted, but only thoſe of his father's father. This is alſo the rule of the French law[1], which is derived from the ſame feodal fountain.
Here we may obſerve, that, ſo far as the feud is really antiquum, the law traces it back, and will not ſuffer any to inherit but the blood of thoſe anceſtors, from whom the feud was conveyed to the late proprietor. But when, through length of time, it can trace it no farther; as if it be not known whether his grandfather, George Stiles, inherited it from his father Walter Stiles, or his mother Chriſtian Smith; or if it appear that his grandfather was the firſt grantee, and ſo took it (by the general law) as a feud of indefinite antiquity; in either of theſe caſes the law admits the deſcendants of any anceſtor of George Stiles, either paternal or maternal, to be in their due order the heirs to John Stiles of this eſtate: becauſe in the firſt caſe it is really uncertain, and in the ſecond caſe it is ſuppoſed to be uncertain, whether the grandfather derived his title from the part of his father or his mother.
This then is the great and general principle, upon which the law of collateral inheritances depends; that, upon failure of iſſue in the laſt proprietor, the eſtate ſhall deſcend to the blood of the firſt purchaſor; or, that it ſhall reſult back to the heirs of the body of that anceſtor, from whom it either really has, or is ſuppoſed by fiction of law to have, originally deſcended: according to the rule laid down in the yearbooks[2], Fitzherbert[3], Brook[4], and Hale[5]; "that he who would have been heir to the father of the deceaſed" (and, of courſe, to the mother, or any other purchaſing anceſtor) "ſhall alſo be heir to the ſon."
The remaining rules are only rules of evidence, calculated to inveſtigate who that purchaſing anceſtor was; which, in feudis
