If the Time-Turner were turned back to the Middle Ages, an era rife with war and plague, and the man of the house died, leaving his property to his widow, what if she was deceived by some "young boyfriend"?
Some men had a habit of marrying widows because they inherited their husbands' estates, and combined with their own dowries, that amounted to no small sum.
So rather than let outsiders benefit, it was better to let one's own brothers benefit. Influenced by canon law, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain divided inheritance into movable and immovable property. Britain had always followed the principle of divided inheritance for movable property. An estate was split into three portions: one each for the wife, children, and church. The third given to the church was called "the dead man's share."
Inheritance of immovable property meant land inheritance, and it followed primogeniture. At the time, people's main assets were immovable property, while movable property generally accounted for only a small proportion of personal wealth. In addition, British society had restricted inheritance rights. For families without sons, their immovable property was inherited by male relatives.
The Act of Settlement, on the other hand, had no such provision. Both sons and daughters could inherit the throne, though sons took precedence over daughters.
Furthermore, who inherited the throne was not decided by the British monarch alone, but by Parliament. That was how the Hanoverian royal house came from Germany to Britain and inherited the throne.
If women were forced to marry in order to produce more people, and the government passed laws stripping women of their property and inheritance rights, then humanity would have turned back to the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance along with the following two hundred years would all have been for nothing.
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