one tenant, one of them being responsible for the payments. In some cases these co-parceners were brothers, and are so described in Domesday Book. The custom of gavelkind in Kent was very similar to this, the land being, indeed, actually divided, but taxed collectively. In Hampshire it was taxed as a whole, and held by parceners as a whole, without apparently being actually divided. Except in preventing minute subdivision, there was in practice very little difference.
In the adjoining county of Dorset partible inheritance of the Kentish type survived at the time of the Domesday Survey and long afterwards at Wareham and in Portland Island. In Hampshire at the time of the Survey the partible custom, which may have prevailed at an earlier period among the descendants of the Northern Goths or Jutish settlers, had apparently given place to a modified tenure, so that parceners inherited their shares in an undivided estate. Under the general law of the kingdom, apart from recognised local customs, none but females were able to hold an estate together.[1] By the custom of gavelkind this was different, for by it males might hold lands in parcenary, the descent being to all males equally.[2] Parceners took their estates by descent, and their very title or name accrued only by descent.[3] The parceners in the Jutish parts of Hampshire who are mentioned by name in Domesday Book are all males. Parceners do not take by survivorship, but lands descend to their issue as in gavelkind.[4] From these considerations there can be no doubt that we may see in the parcenary tenure which prevailed so largely in the Isle of Wight and the New Forest district, which are known to have been settled by Jutes, traces of inhabitants of the same race as that of the people of Kent, among whom gavelkind was, and is, such a strongly-marked characteristic custom. In this parage custom we may also
