compared with the customs of Norway and Cumberland, are so clearly of Scandian origin that we may look for other traces of the Northmen in Sussex. The name rapes for the county divisions appears to be of Scandinavian origin, and to be connected with Anglo-Saxon rap, ræp, and the Gothic raip, signifying a rope. In Iceland districts are called hreppar to the present day.[1] Scandinavian place-names may be recognised in Harlinges (an old place near Framfield), Bosham, Bosgrave, Thorney, Angmering, Swanborough, Denton, Scale near Stenning, and Angleton, all ancient names which occur in their old forms in ancient records. There are two places named Blechington, one north of Brighton, and the other east of Newhaven. These family settlement names suggest some connection with Scandian people from Blekinge, the province in the South of Sweden. These ancient names, and the survival of the customs mentioned, so clearly point to Northmen that there can be no doubt that settlements of them, probably during the later Saxon period, took place on the Sussex coast.
At Rotherfield there were three kinds of heritable land—viz., farthingland, cotmanland, and assartland. The eldest son was heir of the assartland, and the wife was not entitled to dower. The assartland was that which had been reclaimed from some forest clearing, and, being new cultivated land, there was no customary mode of inheritance attached to it. Consequently, it followed the common law of primogeniture. The youngest son was heir of the farthingland and cotmanland, but, if there were no sons, there was this difference between the descent of farthingland and cotmanland: the former descended to the youngest daughter, while the latter was divided among all the daughters.[2] To this
