304 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



of Edwartl 1, when the heirs appear in most cases as descendants 

 of Normans. Yet a few iuga there derived their names from 

 Anglo-Saxons or Danes — an indication that in some sense the 

 iuga were before the Conquest connected with individuals. 

 Whether the Anglo-Saxon tenant held for himself or for his 

 family group must be left undetermined. If the latter relation- 

 ship was the existent one, the custom of gavelkind is carried back 

 to pre-Conquest days.^ However this be, the Kentish system, in 

 the subdivision and reconsolidation of its holdings, was not 

 unlike the Celtic. It was in the size and shape of their respective 

 units that the two systems differed. The iugum of the one was 

 rectangular and relatively small, the townland of the other irreg- 

 ular in shape and larger. An explanation of these facts and of 

 the origin of the Kentish system will be hazarded in a concluding 

 summary and synthesis. 



^ Maitland remarks that there is no reason for assigning the body of Kentish 

 custom characterized by tenure of gavelkind to a period earlier than the Conquest. 

 Elsewhere he notes that the Kentish villani of Domesday Book seem not particu- 

 larly distinguished from those of other counties among whom a system of impartible 

 successions may at that time have prevailed. (Pollock and Maitland, History of 

 English Law, 2d ed., Cambridge, 1898, i. 187; ii. 272, 263). 



