an ancient custom, and that land was held by this custom in many parts of the East Riding and elsewhere in Yorkshire at the end of the Saxon period is a circumstance which assists us in endeavouring to discover traces of ancient settlers of different races. In the South of England, as we have seen, a great deal of the land in the Isle of Wight and in the New Forest which was colonised by Jutes was held in parcenary at the time of the Norman Survey, and Jutes are admitted to have been Goths or Frisians, or both. Among the Goths, but interspersed by a diversity of local usages, the custom under which estates were administered by a single heir for all the heirs grew up and spread through parts of Germany and countries where Gothic influence prevailed.[1]
The survival of the custom in England points, therefore, to people of Gothic or Frisian descent, or to German people of some other tribe or nation. It may, however, have been Danish, for among Saxons and Danes the ordinary course of descent was to all the sons.[2] As, therefore, we can trace Norwegian settlements in parts of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, and Hertfordshire in the custom of succession by the eldest daughter in default of sons, so by this parcenary system in Yorkshire we can trace people of Gothic extraction and others who were Frisians or of some German race. In addition to the cases recorded in Domesday Book where holdings in parcenary were found in Yorkshire, the custom of partible inheritance, more or less resembling gavelkind in Kent, prevailed on at least some of the lands which formed the fees of Richmond, Pickering, and the great fee of the Archbishop known as that of St. Peter’s, York.[3]
Pickering is mentioned in Domesday Book by the ancient clan-name of the people living in the district round it, Picheringa. On this great manor the evidence
