Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/267

Rh in Friesland, and can be traced further back to the Goths of Gothland, may, of course, have been brought into England, and to some of the manors on the north and east of London, by the settlers who originally formed colonies there; but there are other circumstances that connect early Kent and London. The custom of partible inheritance among the sons prevailed at Kentish Town, and it is a very remarkable circumstance that on this manor, which bears the Kentish name, a Kentish custom actually survived until modern times.

As in Kent, so in London, the people were not liable to the ordinary process of distress for debts.

Another custom which the citizens of London had in common with the people of Kent was the power of devising their property by will. Kent alone among the English counties had this privilege, which was a rare one possessed by the tenants of only a few isolated manors elsewhere. It was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that copyholds generally were made devisable by will. Another resemblance in custom between Kent and the City was the age at which heirs could inherit. Bracton, who wrote in the thirteenth century, tells us that the full age of heirs was twenty-one in the case of a military fief, and twenty-five in the case of a socman. In Kent a son could succeed his father at fifteen years, and the son of a burgher was understood to be of full age when he knew how to count pence rightly, to measure cloths by the ell, and to perform other like business of his father.

There was yet another resemblance between the customs of London and Kent—viz., in the widow’s dower. She was entitled to half her husband’s estate, even if his goods should be otherwise forfeited for felony. This was the custom of Kent, and the Dooms of Æthelstan tell us that it was the custom also of Anglo-Saxon London.

One of the privileged customs of the Frisians was their