ealed by seven witnesses. Like the Mancipatory Will, it passed
the Inheritance and not merely a _Bonorum Possessio_. Several,
however, of its most important features were annexed by positive
enactments, and it is out of regard to this threefold derivation from
the Praetorian Edict, from the Civil Law, and from the Imperial
Constitutions, that Justinian speaks of the Law of Wills in his own
day as _Jus Tripertitum_. The new Testament thus described is the one
generally known as the Roman Will. But it was the Will of the Eastern
Empire only; and the researches of Savigny have shown that in Western
Europe the old Mancipatory Testament, with all its apparatus of
conveyance, copper, and scales, continued to be the form in use far
down in the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER VII

ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS RESPECTING WILLS AND SUCCESSIONS

Although there is much in the modern European Law of Wills which is
intimately connected with the oldest rules of Testamentary disposition
practised among men, there are nevertheless some important differences
between ancient and modern ideas on the subject of Wills and
Successions. Some of the points of difference I shall endeavour to
illustrate in this chapter.

At a period, removed several centuries from the era of the Twelve
Tables, we find a variety of rules engrafted on the Roman Civil Law
with the view of limiting the disinherison of children; we have the
jurisdiction of the Praetor very actively exerted in the same interest;
and we are also presented with a new remedy, very anomalous in
character and of uncertain origin, called the Querela Inofficiosi
Testamenti, "the Plaint of an Unduteous Will," directed to the
reinstatement of the issue in inheritances from which they had been
unjustifiably excluded by a father's Testament. Comparing this
condition of the law with the text of the Twelve Tables which concedes
in terms the utmost liberty of Testation, several writers have been
tempted to interweave a good deal of dramatic incident into their
history of the Law Testamentary. They tell us of the boundless license
of disinherison in which the heads of families instantly began to
indulge, of the scandal and injury to public morals which the new
practices engendered, and of the applause of all good men which hailed
the courage of the Praetor in arresting the progress of paternal
depravity. This story, which is not without some foundation for the
principal fact it relates, is often so to