Baroness von Bodman met with her surviving sister Marie Anne Marguerite O'Neill in a French notary's office in 1901, with various O'Neill claimants, and issued a paper recognizing Jorge O'Neill of the Lisbon and Clanaboy O'Neills, as successor to Tyrone: as Peter Berresford Ellis observes, this was not in their power either under the law of the Kingdom of Ireland or under brehon law. In Brehon law, the men of the O'Neills could decide their next leader, but the considerable rights of women under the brehons did not include a voice in that decision. Under Irish law, the Earldom descends by patent to heirs male; any right to it François-Henry O'Neill had possessed would either pass to the next surviving line of male heirs at his death, or be extinguished if there weren't any.