CHAPTER XXI.
SETTLEMENTS IN MERCIA.
IN some of the counties which were comprised within the kingdom of Mercia we meet with remarkable traces of old tribal customs. There is a charter relating to the borough of Leicester granted by Simon de Montfort, and dated October 25, 1255. In this document he ordered, apparently as Earl of Leicester, that the burgage tenements of the people of that town which by custom descended to the youngest son should thereafter follow the course of common law and go to the eldest. This charter never received the King’s ratification, but its validity does not seem to have been questioned.[1] By similar arbitrary measures changes were probably made in other places. Junior right is known to have existed in Derby, Nottingham. Stamford. and Stafford, in addition to a considerable number of rural manors in the Midland counties. It could not have been spontaneously developed in these towns, not at the other more numerous places in which traces of it can be found, and was probably brought in by the early settlers.
Partible inheritance, more or less resembling the gavelkind custom in Kent, as well as junior right, can be traced unmistakably in the counties of Leicester and Nottingham. To what extent they prevailed originally it is not possible to say, for in some places customs may have
- ↑ Elton, C. I., ‘Robinson on Gavelkind,’ p. 66.
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