been changed and all traces of them lost, either by the later settlements of Danes or by compulsory orders like that made at Leicester. In Leicestershire, partible inheritance is known to have been the rule in the soke of Rothley.
This place is situated in the north of the county, and at the time of Domesday Survey included twenty-one members or subordinate manors, among which were Allexton, Baresbi, Segrave, Markfield, Halstead, Frisby, Saxelby, Bagrave, and Gaddesby.[1] It comprised at that time 204 sokemen, 157 villeins, and 94 bordiers, who together formed an administrative district apart from the hundreds of the county. In this liberty the lands held by a sokeman, and presumably also by the other tenants, were on the death of the holder parted between his sons, or in the absence of sons, among his daughters. If he left only one son and one daughter, the son took the whole. If he left a widow, she held the land for her life, provided she remained single, but if she married again she kept only a third as her dower, and the rest passed to the heirs.
There is much similarity between this custom and that of Kent. There can thus be little doubt that Leicestershire received among its Anglian colonists some settlers who migrated from Kent or came from Gothland and Frisia. It should be noted that Frisby and Gaddesby are among the names of ancient places which were included within the Soke of Rothley. The early Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of Leicestershire were known as the Middle Angles, but the laws of the Angles of the Continent were especially marked by preference for male inheritance in the time of Charlemagne. If we may assume that this was an earlier custom characteristic of the race, as it was among the Continental Saxons, it would not be likely that the Angles of Leicestershire
- ↑ Domesday Book, and Maitland, F. W., ‘Domesday Book and Beyond,’ 114.
