Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800Eileen Spring presents a fresh interpretation of the history of inheritance among the English gentry and aristocracy. In a work that recasts both the history of real property law and the history of the family, she finds that one of the principal and determinative features of upper class real property inheritance was the exclusion of females. This exclusion was accomplished by a series of legal devices designed to nullify the common law rules of