5 



of freeholds, the widow of a tenant had been entitled to one third 

 of the property for her life, or if, there being no sons, all the 

 daughters had had the property subdivided amongst them, there 

 would have been no certainty as to the number of men to be 

 obtained from any particular person or estate when required, as 

 possibly in a small tenement providing only one man for service, 

 the widow might have had to provide one third, and the son the 

 remainder, which might have produced a difficulty; and this being 

 the case, it became necessary to make some arrangement by which 

 there should be absolute certainty that the assistance required 

 should be forthcoming. This was done by adopting a system 

 which has now become one of the distinguishing characteristics of 

 Westmorland customaryholds, namely, that the widow shall be 

 entitled to the rents of the whole property for her life, and that 

 the eldest daughter shall take to the exclusion of her younger 

 sisters. By this means each estate was kept whole and undivided, 

 and to this custom of keeping estates in one hand may in great 

 measure be traced the existence down to recent times, of the large 

 body of Westmorland statesmen whose estates, unaltered, had 

 been in their families for generations ; for it became not only a 

 legal custom, but also an honourable tradition, that the estates 

 should not be diminished or parted with. 



There is no doubt whatever that the customary tenants of 

 Westmorland paid very dearly for their estates, for although they 

 paid no rent, they often paid with their life's blood for the posses- 

 sion of their small holdings ; and things continued in this way 

 until long after the remaining portions of the country had settled 

 down to peaceful avocations ; and it was not until the reign of 

 James I., when the thrones of England and Scotland became 

 united, that the necessity for border service ceased. That king, 

 like all the Stuarts, was frequently in want of money, and he 

 began, after he had been a short time upon the throne, to wonder 

 by what means he could replenish his exhausted exchequer ; and 

 amongst other things, it struck him that if he were to take into his 

 own possession the whole of the lands in Westmorland which had 

 been held upon border service, they could be sold for a large sum 



