The other great division includes all the _servi natura_, _nativi_, or serfs by reason of unfree birth; and as these are necessarily the children either of parents who are both unfree, or (under particular circumstances) of one unfree parent, it follows that their hereditary condition may arise from any one of the conditions heretofore under examination. All the legitimate children of two serfs are themselves irrevocably serfs[369]: but some distinctions arise where the parents are of unequal condition, as where the mother is free, the father unfree, and _vice versa_. In this respect the law was very different among the different tribes: the Swedish law declared in favour of liberty[370], the German generally the other way[371]. The Sachsenspiegel decides that the children follow the father’s right[372], and similarly the law of Henry the First[373] has, “Si quis de servo patre natus sit et matre libera, pro servo reddatur occisus;” and again, “Si pater sit liber et mater ancilla, pro libero reddatur occisus;” on the general principle that “semper a patre non a matre generacionis ordo texitur,” which Fortescue confirms, saying[374], “Lex Angliae nunquam matris, sed semper patris conditionem imitari partum iudicat, ut ex libera etiam ex nativa non nisi liberum liber generet, et non nisi servum in matrimonio procreare potest servus.” Fleta’s argument rests upon the same doctrine[375]. Glanville however appears to adopt the contrary view[376], which agrees with the maxim of the civil law, “Partus sequitur ventrem.” To the English principle I am bound to give my adhesion, inasmuch as the natural and the original social law can recognize none but the father, either in the generation, or in the subsequent rule, of the family: whatever alleviation the practices of chivalry, the worship of the Virgin mother, and the Christian doctrine of the equality of man and woman before God, may have introduced, the original feeling is on the father’s side, and the foundations of our law are based upon the all-sufficiency of his right. A woman is in the mund or keeping of a man; society exists for men only, that is, for women merely as far as they are represented by a man. ----- Footnote 369: Theod. Poen. xvi. § 33. Ecgb. Poen. xxv. Footnote 370: Deut. Rechtsalt. p. 324. Footnote 371: Ibid. p. 324. Footnote 372: Sachs. iii. 73. Footnote 373: Leg. Hen. I. lxxvii. § 1, 2. Footnote 374: Commend. cap. xlii. Footnote 375: Lib. i. cap. 3. § 2. Footnote 376: “Sunt autem nativi a prima nativitate sua; quemadmodum si quis fuerit procreatus ex nativo et nativa, ille quidem nativus nascitur. _Idem est si ex patre libero et matre nativa._ Sed si ex matre libera et patre nativo, idem est dicendum quantum ad status integritatem.” Lib. v. cap. 6. But the passage in italic is wanting in some manuscripts, and may possibly have been the gloss or addition of a civilian.