heritance over any considerable districts in the Midlands, as we can in Sussex, and some counties on the eastern or south-western coasts, yet examples of its existence have been found in a few manors of nearly all the old Mercian shires. It may have existed among copyholders in other manors only known locally. Elton says that although in the Midland counties it is comparatively rare, yet it has been found at the rate of about two or three manors to a county.[1] From its survival on a comparatively large scale in some of the maritime counties and on numerous manors around London, and its rarity in the Midlands, we appear justified in drawing the conclusion that this custom, as it existed in England, was brought by maritime settlers, and that, as some of their descendants migrated farther inland, they carried it with them. In Huntingdonshire borough-English was the customary law of inheritance at Gumecester, or Godmanchester,[2] and at Eynesbury.[3] The name Gumecester, or Gumycester, may be traced to the Gothic guma (a man), so that the settlement of northern Goths at Godmanchester, close to Huntingdon, appears to be shown by both its ancient and modern names. Some of their allies who settled there with them may have brought in the junior right.
In the custom that prevailed at Godmanchester we appear to have an example of the blending of those of two races—viz.: (1) That in favour of the youngest son, which was not Anglian; (2) that in favour of males in preference to females, which was Anglian. By the laws of the Continental Anglians, males were preferred to females as far as the fifth generation. The custom of Godmanchester provided ‘that if a man have two sons by his wife, and one of these have an heir masculine and the other an heir feminine, and if after these sons do depart and die, the father of them being alive, and after it chances the father
