a less extent, on some few manors in Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Kent, Devon, Cornwall. Rutland, Herefordshire, Berkshire, Shropshire, and Monmouthshire. In Sussex it prevailed on 140 manors, chiefly in the Rape of Lewes, where the custom was almost an exclusive one. This junior right or inheritance of the youngest son, or borough-English, as it has been commonly called, also prevailed in parts of Glamorganshire, where its occurrence will be considered in connection with the settlement of the English on the Welsh border. There is no trace of any similar custom under which the youngest son is the sole heir in the ancient laws of Wales.
It is certain that this custom could not have arisen spontaneously in so many places and districts widely separated from each other. It has probably come from some general race custom, and has been preserved in the localities where it has survived by the attachment of the people to the usages of their ancestors. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of mankind than the attachment of people of all races to the customs which have been handed down to them from their forefathers. That junior right was preserved in the boroughs and manors in which it survived through all the period of the Middle Ages, when the tendency was one ever growing stronger in favour of primogeniture, is remarkable testimony to its vitality, and the attachment to it of those who lived under it. If we can thus trace it, as we may, as far back as the Old English period, when people certainly were as tenacious of their ancient customs as their descendants were, it is reasonable to conclude that those who lived under it in the Saxon period also inherited it from some earlier forefathers. The custom of junior right is no more likely to have been invented here and there in certain early boroughs and manors of Saxon England than of Mediæval England. We must look for its origin in the Continental homes of our oldest English
