Primogeniture, under the feudal law of the middle ages, in England, created the necessity for wills of real estate, for although all children of the Germanic races took equally and this was true, at Rome, under the feudal law all the children were practically disinherited in favor of the eldest son; some method of devising the estate to the eldest son was essential, on the part of the testator of real estate, so the Clergy adopted the Roman will as the instrument for accomplishing the purpose and thus it is sometimes called “an accidental fruit of feudalism.”[36] The liberty taken by the Church with the estates of deceased persons was a matter of such scandal and oppression, during the reigns of Henry III. and Edward II., that Parliament on several occasions imposed rules for the government of the bishops in the administration of the estates of intestates. Executors were required, during the reign of Henry III., to make a true inventory of the property of the deceased, and exhibit it to credible persons, acquainted with the property of the deceased,[37] and this is no doubt, the foundation for this provision of our modern law, requiring inventories, in such cases. During the reign of Edward IV. the _testamentum_ and _ultima voluntas_ came to be regarded in much the same legal aspect, although the former was the more solemn act and the execution of the testament was always in accordance with the forms prescribed in the older law books and if these preliminaries were omitted it was but a mere _ultima voluntas_.[38] In the reign of Edward VI. the reformers of that period objected to the promiscuous use of wills by all classes, so an act was passed preventing the execution of wills by wives, _servi_, by minors under fourteen, by heretics, criminals, condemned to death, exile, or chains; those who did not dismiss their concubines before they were in extremis, people with two wives or husbands, libelers, prostitutes or procuresses and usurers. The indulgence was granted to those keeping concubines, however, and to those with two wives or husbands—perhaps because of the leniency with which such crimes were looked upon at this period—of disposing of their goods _in pias causas_, or for the relief of the poor, afflicted, for young women, the support of students and the reparation of highways.[39] Under the old law, the division of the decedent’s property, whether by will or otherwise, was one-third to his wife, a third to his children and the other third, the owner himself could dispose of. If no will was left, the wife and children took their one-third each and the rest was divided by the administrator. If no children survived, the widow took half and the owner could dispose of the other half, or, if the owner died intestate, the administrator disposed of the remaining half and the same was true, if there were no children, but a widow survived.[40]