THE relation between property and privilege has been the determining principle in Constitutional Evolution, and the distinction between the sexes in the matter of Property has been the radical cause of the distinction between them in regard to Privilege. It is necessary to trace this. The custom of Military Tenure made male heirs more valuable to the Crown than female heirs, inasmuch as personal service was more effective and reliable than representative service; and, therefore, in early Norman days, when all lands lay in the King’s gift, he was eager to confirm each succeeding son of the last owner in his possessions, before _any_ of the daughters. But the principles of justice, the customs of the land, and the springs of human nature, combined in opposition to a further exercise of the Royal will, so that _all_ the daughters succeeded before any of the collateral heirs, before uncle, cousin, or nephew. Husbands and fathers would not have risked their lives freely in the King’s wars, if they knew that wives and daughters were to lose their estates, at the same time as they lost the protection of their strong right arms. A survival of Saxon opinion strangely affected further the position of daughters, when the chaos of custom took form in law. An eldest-born son could inherit to the detriment of his younger brothers, following the Norman custom of primogeniture, but the eldest-born daughter held no privilege over her younger sisters, who were all _co-parceners_ with her as regarded the inheritance, in the manner that children of both sexes inherited among the Saxons, and among the representatives of the Saxons, the free men of Kent. An indivisible inheritance, such as a title, fell in abeyance among daughters until decided by the selection of the Crown, though it was generally granted to the eldest daughter.[i.] Unless a woman, therefore, was an only child, she did not succeed to the entire advantages of “the heir,” but as only child, and sole heiress, she inherited to the full the rights and privileges of her father, brother, or ancestor. Sex-in-itself did not _disqualify_ a woman from anything. There was no excusing a woman a duty, and _consequently_ no denying her a privilege. “_Essoin de servitio regis_ lyeth not where the party is a woman” (Statutes 33, Ed. I.). The only advantage granted her, that of “sending a deputy,” she was allowed in common with men, frail or infirm, or over the age of bearing arms.