Note 67 — Chapter IV · THE EARLY FRANKS

This has been alleged to be the basis of the misnamed "Salic Law" by virtue of which no woman, in the days of the French monarchy, was permitted to inherit the throne. As a matter of fact, however, the exclusion of women from the French throne was due, not to this or to any other early Frankish principle, but to later circumstances which called for stronger monarchs in France than women have ordinarily been expected to be. The history of the modern "Salic Law" does not go back of the resolution of the French nobles in 1317 against the general political expediency of female sovereigns [see p. 420].