on the Zuyder Zee, are identical. The extreme antiquity of Wisby as a port points to an early code of some kind necessarily connected with it as the original source of the Frisian regulations. By the Usages of Amsterdam and the custom of the Frisian ports, and by the Maritime Law of Wisby, the interval allowed as lay-days for a chartered vessel is fourteen days, the fortnight of English usage, whereas in the ‘Judgments of Damme,’ or regulations of West Flanders, derived from the Rolls of Oleron, the time is fifteen days.[1] There is thus a remarkable coincidence between the maritime usage of old Frisian and Gothic ports and those of England, of which London was the chief. It points to Frisian and Gothic traders in such numbers as to be able to introduce an important provision of their own marine customs into English ports, and this probably with people descended from their own races who traded with them, as was likely to have been the case in Anglo-Saxon London.
When we leave the consideration of the Goths and Frisians, and turn our attention to the remarkable customs which have come down from time immemorial on the south and west of the city, we are met by circumstances of another kind. Inheritance by the youngest son instead of the eldest, as in common law, prevailed unto within living memory on the manors of Kennington, Walworth, Vauxhall, Peckham Rye, Wandsworth, Battersea, Lambeth, Streatham, Croydon, Barnes, Shene or Richmond, and Petersham. On the north of the Thames it existed at Edmonton, Tottenham, Ealing, Acton, Isleworth, and Earl’s Court.[2] Junior right prevails among some of the Frisians of Friesland. It can also be traced and still exists in parts of ancient Wendland—i.e., Pomerania—and, as already pointed out, is found sporadically in isolated districts of Germany, North-Eastern France, and Belgium, where isolated
