At 05:33 03/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>There never was an overall 'English' system of property inheritance. Apart
>from the wishes of testators in wills there were various default systems for
>land & property in cases of intestacy. These varied from region to region to
>region, depended on the era and whether the land etc was freehold or
copyhold
>etc. There is no simple answer and once yo get into 'entails' etc then a
>whole new minefield opens up
>Jeremy
>
Primogeniture was practiced most often by the upper classes reluctant to
see their great estates, built up by generations of theft and rapine - not
to mention advantageous marriages, broken up. Hence the younger sons went
into the military, or, if particularly dim, the church.
In the case of the minor merchantile families of Norfolk which I have
studied, the normal course seemed to be to give the bulk of the estate to
the eldest son with attendent responsibilty to pay bequests to the other
children - usually cash drawn from the estate over a limited number of
years. The widow ususally had a life tenancy of the family home (or part of
it).
The system described by Mason's grandmother sounds more like Ireland (after
Catholic emancipation) or France.
Richard Kelham
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