x.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 41 



held as a retainer for military services, because the 

 services also would have to be apportioned ; and we 

 may conjecture that these difficulties assisted in 

 establishing the custom, which gave to one son the 

 land of his father; and, although the eldest might 

 be by no means the fittest to fulfil the duties of a 

 vassal, yet the advantage of having a fixed rule, the 

 probability that when the father died in youth or 

 middle age, the eldest son would be most capable of 

 bearing arms, and the prestige which has always 

 attended primogeniture seem to have been suffi- 

 cient to recommend that rule in England, as in 

 Normandy and in France, which favoured the eldest 

 son, with respect to land held by knight service. 



Two centuries after the Conquest we find the law 

 of primogeniture applied to freehold lands, as well 

 those held by socage as by military tenure, with 

 scarcely any exception beyond the bounds of Kent, 

 and certain boroughs, in which equal division and 

 succession of the youngest prevailed respectively. 

 The latter tenure also remained, as regarded the 

 lands of villeins, in many manors, particularly in those 

 of Sussex. Although, however, the actual division of 

 land and services must have always been attended 

 with difficulty, especially in early times, this incon- 

 venience did not prevent, in England, the succession 

 of daughters equally. The succession of females 

 probably formed no part of the most ancient 

 form of feudalism, but was introduced when the 



