It will be remembered that one of the complaints of the existence of kindreds powerful enough to defy the king’s peace in King Athelstan’s time came from Kent. And if these facts may be taken as evidence that the solidarity of kindreds had been better preserved in Kent than elsewhere some tribal light might perhaps be thrown upon the survival of the custom of gavelkind in Kent.
It is not a matter upon which we must dwell, but evidently the gavelkind tenure must have been something different from the prevalent tenures of other districts. The difference cannot have been the equal division of the sulungs and yokes between sons as contrasted with the single succession to the yardlands of other districts, because the sulungs and yokes were apparently not interfered with by the gavelkind division among heirs. And when the right of the youngest son under the custom of gavelkind to succeed to the parental hearth is compared with the similar right of the youngest son in the case of the Cymric gwely the inference becomes very strong that the gavelkind holdings were family holdings and the gavelkind divisions internal divisions within the family, like those of the Cymric gwely, not necessarily interfering with the permanence of the sulungs and yokes of the open-field system of which the family holdings were composed or in which the family had rights.
The surveys of Kentish manors in the records of Battle Abbey and the ‘Black Book of St. Augustine’ present instances sometimes of sulungs and yokes held by the heredes of a deceased person and sometimes of others which maintain their unity for purposes of payments and services although in the possession of several holders. The sulung in these cases seems to have continued to be the unit liable for the fixed ploughing and other services irrespective of the question who were its occupants.[324]
Once more perhaps some light may be gained from Cymric tribal custom.
Analogy of the Cymric trefgordd.
We have learned from the Cymric evidence that a district might be divided for purposes of revenue and food rents into sub-districts, irrespective of who might be the occupants. And we have seen also how the Cymric trefgordd or unit of pastoral occupation, with its one plough and one churn and one herd of cattle under a single herdsman, could remain a permanent taxable unit paying the tunc pound in lieu of food rents, whoever might at the time be its occupants and have cattle in the herd. Within the lines of tribal custom itself the members of a Cymric gwely might be spread over a district and their cattle distributed among many trefgordds, while from the chieftain’s point of view the local units of taxation were uniform and regular.
But the yardlands were mostly holdings with single succession on payment of a relief to the lord.
But this must not blind our eyes to the fact that the yardlands on Anglo-Saxon estates were, so far as we can see, for the most part really individual holdings with actual single succession. However hard tribal custom may have fought for the family element, the manorial element in the end seems to have prevailed on most manors so as to secure, for the purposes of the lordship and the convenience of manorial management, single succession to the yardlands. The fact that as early as King Ine’s time we see new individual holdings of geburs being made by the allotment of yardlands and homesteads to individual tenants in return for gafol and work, when taken in connection with the ‘Rectitudines’ brings us back to the likeness of these holdings to the holdings of the villani of later times. We see in the allotment of stock to the gebur, of which we trace scattered evidence, the fact on which the principle of the later villenage was based. Only when both homestead and yardland came from the lord was there to be work as well as gafol under King Ine’s laws. The stock of the holding according to the ‘Rectitudines’ belonged in theory to the lord and upon the tenant’s death returned to the lord. The continuance to another tenant on the payment of a relief involved the admission that the holding and its outfit were a loan from the lord.
The manorial element must not be lost sight of.