The rights and property of a tribesman dying without issue fall into the common stock.
Even after this innovation, if a brother had died without issue, his brothers as brothers did not at once succeed as co-heirs. The share fell into the common stock till a division, and then went to all the co-inheritors per capita, so that cousins, and it might be even second cousins, took their shares in it.
The introduction of succession by representation to a deceased father’s property and privilege was, as we shall see in Continental cases, a step taken in the direction of individual ownership. It complicated the matter of the division or devolution of the chieftainship in the gwely, but it is a point of interest in connection with the Continental evidence.
A clear understanding of the constitution and working of the gwely, as a typical family group, is so important to this inquiry that it is worth while to place before the reader the passages in codes upon which, taken together with the surveys, the foregoing description of it rests.
Clauses in the Venedotian Code.
The following is the clause in the Venedotian Code describing what took place in the gwely, under the heading ‘The Law of Brothers for Land:’
Thus, brothers are to share land between them: four erws to every tyddyn [homestead]. Bleddyn, son of Cynvyn, altered it to twelve erws to the uchelwr, and eight to the aillt, and four to the godaeog; yet, nevertheless, it is most usual that four erws be in the tyddyn.…
If there be no buildings on the land, the youngest son is to divide all the patrimony (trew y tat), and the eldest is to choose, and each in seniority choose unto the youngest.
If there be buildings the youngest brother but one is to divide the tyddyns, for in that case he is the meter; and the youngest to have his choice of the tyddyns; and after that he is to divide all the patrimony; and by seniority they are to choose unto the youngest; and that division is to continue during the lives of the brothers.
And after the brothers are dead, the first cousins are to equalise if they will it; and thus they are to do: the heir of the youngest brother is to equalise, and the heir of the eldest brother is to choose, and so by seniority unto the youngest; and that distribution is to continue between them during their lives.