Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/121

 3. POLLOCK: ANGLO-SAXON LAW 107 Norman books, was common in some parts ; preference of the youngest daughter, in default of sons, or even of the youngest among collateral heirs, was not unknown. But the prevailing type was equal division among sons, not among children including daughters on an equal footing as modern systems have it.^ Here again the effect of the Norman Con- quest was to arrest or divert the native lines of growth. In this country we now live under laws of succession derived in part from the military needs of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages, and in part from the cosmopolitan legislation of Justinian, the line between the application of the two systems being drawn in a manner which is accounted for by the peculiar history of our institutions and the relations between different jurisdictions in England, but cannot be explained on any rational principle. But the unlimited free- dom of disposal by will which we enjoy under our modern law has reduced the anomalies of our intestate succession to a matter of only occasional inconvenience. Small indeed, it is easy to perceive, is the portion of Anglo- Saxon customs which can be said to have survived in a re- cognizable form. This fact nevertheless remains compatible with a perfectly real and living continuity of spirit in our legal institutions. Germanic customs for their own sake, or as part of a comparative study of archaic customs in general, is deliberately left aside as irrelevant to the purpose in hand.
 * The discussion which would be necessary if we were here studying