The establishment of the Shogunate by the Tokugawa could not affect to any great extent the social position of women in general, for in that domain radical alterations were not to be expected from the age in which militarism was all-powerful. There was one thing, however, which was worthy of special notice, concerning the new usage of marriage among the _daimyo_. As to the right of inheriting their territories, the preference, it is true, had been on the side of the offspring of a legal marriage, for it could not have been otherwise in a society in which the right of primogeniture had been just established for the sake of maintaining the order intact. Yet there existed no rigorous rule through the whole history of the Shogunate, which might be said to have aimed at discouraging mesalliances, and the natural sons of the _daimyo_ were by no means deprived of their right of inheritance on account of the mean origin of their mother. The Shogunate, however, interfered in the marriages of the _daimyo_, and all of them were obliged to take unto themselves consorts from families of equal rank, that is to say, the legal wife of a _daimyo_ had to be a daughter or sister of another _daimyo_, one of his equals. Some of the higher _daimyo_, especially those of the blood of Tokugawa, often married daughters of court-nobles, for the purpose of keeping the latter in close relation with the Shogunate. In the military peerage list of the time the wife of every ruling _daimyo_ had her place together with the heir, alongside of her husband, though even in this case her name used to be omitted, while that of the heir was given. In spite of the fact, therefore, that the intermarriage of the people of different territories had often been prohibited by territorial laws, those _daimyo_ themselves who were desirous of enforcing those laws were obliged to find their legal wives outside of their territory, in other words, to contract an interterritorial marriage. Such a marriage within the circle of the _daimyo_ had of course very little to do with the territorial politics of the _daimyo_ concerned, for most of the ladies chosen as brides were those who had been brought up in their father's residence at Yedo, and after their marriage they had to remain in the same city as hostages to the Shogunate, and not allowed to leave it for their territory. Moreover, as the marriage of the _daimyo_ received the close supervision of the Shogunate, they could have borne very little, if any, political meaning of a sort which might be attached to the intermarriages of different royal families in Europe. Culturally speaking, however, such a marriage had the effect of levelling the ways of living of various _daimyo_, and making them similar to one another. The bride was usually accompanied into her husband's family by maids, the daughters of her father's vassals, and she was often escorted by a few _samurai_. These _samurai_ as well as the maids often took service under the _daimyo_,