The persistence in division among heirs and the right of the youngest were very likely therefore to linger as survivals of the tribal household.
Survival of this equal division and the right of the youngest.
Now it is well known that in the south-east of England, and especially in Kent, the custom of Gavelkind has continued to the present day, retaining the division among male heirs and historical traces of the right of the youngest son to the original homestead. In other districts of England and in many parts of Europe and Asia the division among heirs has passed away, but the right of the youngest—Jüngsten-Recht—has survived.
Mr. Elton, in his 'Origins of English History,' has carefully described the geographical distribution in Western Europe of the practice, not so much of division among heirs, as of the right of the youngest to [p353] inherit the original homestead, the latter having survived in many districts where the other has not.
In Wales and S.E. England—the old 'Saxon shore.'
In England he finds the right of the youngest most prevalent in the south-east counties—in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, in a ring of manors round London, and to a less extent in Essex and the East Anglian kingdom,—i.e. as Mr. Elton describes it, in a district about co-extensive with what in Roman times was known as the Saxon shore. A few examples occur in Hampshire, and there is a wide district where the right of the youngest survives in Somersetshire, which formed for so long a part of what the Saxons called 'Wealcyn.' [532]
Further, as the custom is found to apply to copyhold or semi-servile holdings, it would not be an impossible conjecture that previously existing original tribal households were, at some period, upon conquest, reduced into serfs, the division of the holdings among heirs being at the same time stopped, so as to keep the holdings in equal 'yokes,' or 'yard-lands,' thus leaving the right of the youngest as the only point of the pre-existing tribal custom permitted to survive.
Survival of the 'right of the youngest' on the Continent.
A similar process, perhaps in connexion with the Frankish conquest of parts of Germany, possibly had been gone through in many continental districts. Mr. Elton traces the right of the youngest in the north-east corner of France and in Brabant, in Friesland, in Westphalia, in Silesia, in Wirtemberg, in the Odenwald and district north of Lake Constance, in Suabia, in Elsass, in the Grisons. It is found also in [p354] the island of Borneholm, though it seems to be absent in Denmark and on the Scandinavian mainland.[533]
Attention has been called to this curious survival of the right of the youngest because it forms a possible link between the Welsh, English, and continental systems of settlements in tribal households.