Once again, what kind of a holding was that of the twelve-hyndeman? Was it a family holding, and what were the rules of succession?
Place names in favour of its being sometimes a family holding.
Unfortunately, we do not know how far the immigrants came in kindreds and families or as followers and ‘gesiths’ of military chieftains. But, in any case, if we may take the evidence of place-names the great number of patronymic names of places would lead to the supposition that the holdings were family holdings. The ham may at first have been the estate of a gesithcund man held direct of the king with gafolgeldas and geburs under him holding yardlands and doing work on his demesne. But when it becomes an ingham the patronymic termination points to the lordship of the manor having been held, as time went on, jointly, in somewhat the same way as the Cymric chieftainship in the gwely. His sons and grandsons and great-grandsons may really have had their rights of maintenance all along, and ultimately, if they were allowed to do so, they may have sometimes divided the inheritance instead of continuing to hold it jointly. Tribal instincts working alone would probably follow some such line as this.
But it is easy to see that the nearer the holding of the twelve-hyndeman approached to a benefice or office the stronger would be the tendency towards single succession instead of divisions among heirs.
During the century or two after the first settlement there was time, no doubt, for the growth of kindreds, and the thane in the king’s service would soon become the head of a family group; but, on the other hand, many influences were at work undermining the solidarity of the kindred and strengthening the manorial element. Tribal instincts die hard. But probably there never was full opportunity for the growth upon English soil of anything like the solidarity in landholding of the Norse kindreds of odal sharers tracing back their family possession for four or five generations.
Folk-land may have devolved under tribal custom.
There is but little evidence on the rights or rules of succession to be found in the laws. And the silence is suggestive of the continuance of custom. Even the diplomatic evidence of wills and charters is so much restricted to boc-land that it perhaps throws a shadow rather than direct light upon the ordinary devolution of land which had not become the subject of the Romanised rules of ownership, conveyance and testamentary disposition.
But if Professor Vinogradoff is right in his view that folk-land was that land which was still held under ancient custom, then for anything we know, in spite of documentary silence, folk-land may still have been held more or less as family rather than individual property even in later times.
If the suggested analogy between the terra Salica of the Salic laws and the folk-land of Anglo-Saxon documents could be proved, the family character of the holdings in both cases would receive confirmation. At the same time the frequent concurrence of relatives in Anglo-Saxon dispositions of land and the common form of deprecation of future interference on their part would at least be consistent with the supposition.