[140] Diary of De la Pryme (Surtees Society), 126. It may be noted here that Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Traditions, 179, notes the preservation of an ancient law for the preservation of the oak and the hazel in a traditional proverbial rhyme.
[141] Hazlitt, Tenures of Land, 80; other examples refer to the Hundred of Cholmer and Dancing, in Essex, 75; to Kilmersdon, in Somersetshire, 182; to Hopton, in Salop, 165. John of Gaunt is responsible for many of these curious and interesting remains of tribal antiquity. Bisley's Handbook of North Devon, 28, refers to one relating to the manor of Umberleigh, near Barnstaple, and I have a note from Mr. Edmund Wrigglesworth, of Hull, of a parallel to this being preserved by tradition only. There is a tradition respecting the estate of Sutton Park, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, which states that it formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, who gave it to an ancestor of the present proprietor, one Roger Burgoyne, by the following grant:—
"I, John of Gaunt,
Do give and do grant,
To Roger Burgoyne
And the heirs of his loin
Both Sutton and Potton
Until the world's rotten."
Potton was a neighbouring village to Sutton. There is a moated site in the park called "John o' Gaunt's Castle," see Notes and Queries, tenth series, vi. 466. Cf. Aubrey, Collections for Wilts, 185, for an example at Midgehall; Cowell's Law Interpreter, 1607, and the Dictionarum Rusticum, 1704, for the custom of East and West Enborn, in Berks, which was made famous by Addison's Spectator in 1714.
[142] Sometimes these are called "burlesque conveyances." See an example quoted in Hist. MSS. Commission, v. 459.
[143] It is well to bear in mind the great force of ancient tribal law, which was personal, upon localities. Nottingham is divided into two parts, one having primogeniture and the other junior right as the rule of descent. Southampton and Exeter have also local divisions. But perhaps the most striking example is at Breslau, where there co-existed, until 1st January, 1840, five different particular laws and observances in regard to succession, the property of spouses, etc., the application of which was limited to certain territorial jurisdictions; not unfrequently the law varied from house to house, and it even happened that one house was situated on the borders of different laws, to each of which, therefore, it belonged in part; Savigny, Private Int. Law, cap. i. sect. iv.
[144] Academy, February, 1884; Percy Reliques, edit. Wheatley, i. 384.
[145] Trans. British. Association, 1847, p. 321.
[146] Series No. V., published in 1895.
[147] Philological Society Papers, 1870-2, pp. 18, 248; Dr. Murray gives the air in an appendix. See also a note by Mr. Danby Fry in the Antiquary, viii. 164-6, 269-70; and The Hawick Tradition, by R. S. Craig and Adam Laing, published at Hawick in 1898.