Definition
A principle of English inheritance law holding that male heirs were preferred over female heirs in the descent of real property. Where a decedent left both sons and daughters, the sons would inherit to the exclusion of daughters entirely — not merely in priority. The preference extended across the male line so that, for example, a brother would exclude a sister, and a nephew through a brother would exclude a daughter. The rule operated as an absolute displacement, not a mere tie-breaker, reflecting the feudal conception that male heirs were more capable of rendering military and other services owed to the lord. The doctrine is a component of the broader common-law scheme of descent that also included primogeniture and the canons of inheritance abolished in England by the Inheritance Act 1833 and its successors. The principle has no operative force in American law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A male rather than a female, when legally favoured as a successor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry recorded.
The common usage captured by Wiktionary reflects the doctrinal conclusion but strips away the mechanism. In legal use, the phrase names a canon of descent — a rule structuring the entire system of inheritance — not merely a preference that might be weighed against other factors. A researcher encountering the phrase in historical sources should understand it as a term of art embedded in a formal hierarchy of common-law descent rules, not a general cultural attitude about gender and succession.
Common Confusion
WORTHIEST OF BLOOD is occasionally conflated with two related but distinct common-law concepts. First, primogeniture — the preference of the firstborn over younger children — is a separate canon operating within the class of male heirs; worthiest of blood determines which sex inherits, primogeniture determines which male within that sex. Second, the doctrine of worthier title (also involving the phrase "worthier") addresses a different problem entirely: whether a grantor's attempt to convey a remainder to his own heirs is valid or collapses back into the grantor's estate. The shared root word "worth" in both phrases has caused researchers to conflate them in secondary literature, but the two rules address different problems in different transactional contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a historical artifact with no modern legal application in the United States or in England after the nineteenth-century inheritance reforms. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in three contexts: (1) pre-1833 English property law sources and their American colonial-era equivalents; (2) treatise literature, particularly Blackstone's Commentaries at 2 Bl. Comm. 234–240, where the canons of descent are laid out in sequence and worthiest of blood appears as one of several interlocking rules; and (3) comparative or historical scholarship on the abolition of feudal tenures and the rationalization of inheritance law.
The critical navigational point is that American jurisdictions largely rejected this canon from the outset. Most states enacted early statutes of descent and distribution that placed sons and daughters on equal footing, or at most gave sons a preference that was itself quickly repealed. A researcher surveying American property law from the founding period should not assume worthiest of blood applied merely because it was part of received English common law; state reception statutes frequently carved out or reversed the common-law canons of descent, and the historical record requires checking individual state legislation.
Within the Law Mind corpus, worthiest of blood appears primarily in dictionary and treatise entries as a defined term rather than in case reporters, since American courts had little occasion to apply it. Bouvier's entry is notable for directing researchers to Plowden's Commentaries (Plowd. 805) for a substantive discussion of the justifications offered for the rule — the Plowden passage is worth consulting for anyone tracing the intellectual history of gendered inheritance rules.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in nearly complete agreement, differing only in punctuation and formatting. Black's (both editions) and Burrill define the term identically: a rule of English descent giving preference to males over females, with a shared citation to 2 Bl. Comm. 234–240. Bouvier adds the only substantive differentiator — a reference to Plowden at 805 for the justifications offered — and notes that the preference of sons over daughters "is the law of England," implicitly marking it as inapplicable elsewhere.
None of the historical dictionaries explain the mechanism of the rule in any depth, and none address the American position directly. Blackstone's Commentaries remain the essential primary source for understanding how the rule operated within the full sequence of common-law canons of descent. The historical dictionaries function here as finding aids pointing toward Blackstone rather than as self-contained explanations.
Jurisdictional Note
The rule is a creature of English common law and has no operative role in any American jurisdiction. American states either never received this canon or abolished it early in the statutory period. English law abolished the preference formally through the Inheritance Act 1833 and subsequent reform legislation equalizing the descent of real property between males and females.