summary 371 one valid set of rules, but several. A clear break with previous perceptions of land, property and ownership appeared in the 17th century. To avoid misunderstanding, the concepts employed need to be seen as a conglomerate of shifting rights and duties whose content varied over time and place. Ideas of individualism grew stronger as the century progressed. This is noticeable both within legal thought concerning understandings of rights of ownership and questions of property and in religion where, towards the end of the 17th century, the first signs of pietism can be discerned. Natural law argued that private property was a natural right, which is reflected in the writings of Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf. Private property was considered a natural right of the individual. Another key concept in natural law was that society was founded on agreements between individuals. This could be expected to play a role in attitudes to wills and their use. With a focus on the individual, the way was open for a change in attitude to the law of wills whereby the right of determination of individuals over their property was more important than a concern for the interests of the family. In their application of the law, the courts of appeal played a central role in filling the gaps in the defectivemedieval legislation and in changing the law of wills without recourse to legislation. An extensive jurisprudence that considered other sources of law than statutory law created the prerequisites for the making of law by the courts of appeal. One of the main purposes of the will in the early modern period was as a means of avoiding or circumventing the legal rules of inheritance. The will as such could not change the existing rules of inheritance, but could, by means of a form of contract, control the allocation of property to the heirs in a manner that was not possible previously. An overview of the sources of law and the legal arguments employed in cases of disputed wills shows that roughly the same sources and arguments predominated throughout the period studied. The following table shows a clear pattern of use of the most common sources of law referred to in the cases studied from the period 1640-1690: 7.2 Prudentia: Disputed Wills and Legal Argumentation
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