property of a feud; they descended equally to all the children, males and females, according to the custom of gavelkind, a custom absolutely contrary to the genius of the feudal tenure; and whenever estates were granted in the later Saxon times by the bounty of the crown with an intent that they should be inheritable, so far were they from being granted with the complicated load of all the feudal services annexed, that in all the charters of that kind which subsist they are bestowed with a full power of alienation, et liberi ab omni seculari gravamine.  This was the general condition of those inheritances which were derived from the right of original conquest, as well to all the soldiers as to the leader; and these estates, as it is said, were not even forfeitable, no, not for felony, as if that were in some sort the necessary consequence of an inheritable estate.  So far were they from resembling a fief.  But there were other possessions which bore a nearer resemblance to fiefs, at least in their first feeble and infantile state of the tenure, than, those inheritances which were held by an absolute right in the proprietor.  The great officers who attended the court, commanded armies, or distributed justice must necessarily be paid and supported; but in what manner could they be paid?  In money they could not, because there was very little money then in Europe, and scarce any part of that little came into the prince’s coffers.  The only method of paying them was by allotting lands for their subsistence whilst they remained in his service.  For this reason, in the original distribution, vast tracts of land were left in the hands of the king.  If any served the king in a military command, his land may be said to have been in some sort held by knight-service.  If the tenant was in an office about the king’s person, this gave rise to sergeantry; the persons who cultivated his lands may be considered as holding by socage.  But the long train of services that made afterwards the learning of the tenures were then not thought of, because these feuds, if we may so call them, had not then come to be inheritances,—­which circumstance of inheritance gave rise to the whole feudal system.  With the Anglo-Saxons the feuds continued to the last but a sort of pay or salary of office.  The trinoda necessitas, so much spoken of, which was to attend the king in his expeditions, and to contribute to the building of bridges and repair of highways, never bound the lands by way of tenure, but as a political regulation, which equally affected every class and condition of men and every species of possession.

[Sidenote:  Gavelkind.]