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276 of the personal name Franklin in Oxfordshire, the probability of the migration of Kentish freeholders called Franklins from their homes in Kent.

Similarly, in the Upper Thames valley we find examples of parcenary tenure or partible inheritance that resembled in its main features the gavelkind custom of Kent. Domesday Book tells us of brothers holding land jointly at Burfield in Berkshire, Hook Norton in Oxfordshire, Hevaford (Hatford) in North Berkshire, and at Cerney, near Cirencester. It is not improbable, also, that the many instances in Berkshire and Oxfordshire in which manors were held in the time of Edward the Confessor collectively by thanes or freemen are examples of the same kind, such as that of Brize Norton, which was held by fourteen thanes, who were probably of the same kindred. These instances, which are numerous, are apparently examples of manors that were taxed as a whole, but held collectively, as in Kent, by brothers, uncles, and other kinsmen.

The custom of junior inheritance is known to have prevailed at Binsey, near Oxford; Garford, near Abingdon; and Crowmarsh, close to Wallingford. These examples are probably the only survivals of a custom that prevailed in a larger number of places in the Anglo-Saxon period, but which were changed under the feudal system. They show, in any case, an identity with the borough-English custom that existed on so many manors around London, and point to probable migrations from Sussex or Surrey.

The early settlers who came from the south into the valleys of the Upper Thames and of its tributary streams, the Evenlode, Windrush, and others, whose sources are in East Gloucestershire, probably travelled along the great Roman road that extended from Southampton