But this is not all.  The identity of person was carried [350] farther still.  If a man died leaving male children, and owning land in fee, it went to the oldest son alone; but, if he left only daughters, it descended to them all equally.  In this case several individuals together continued the persona of their ancestor.  But it was always laid down that they were but one heir. 1 For the purpose of working out this result, not only was one person identified with another, but several persons were reduced to one, that they might sustain a single persona.

What was the persona?  It was not the sum of all the rights and duties of the ancestor.  It has been seen that for many centuries his general status, the sum of all his rights and duties except those connected with real property, has been taken up by the executor or administrator.  The persona continued by the heir was from an early day confined to real estate in its technical sense; that is, to property subject to feudal principles, as distinguished from chattels, which, as Blackstone tells us, 2 include whatever was not a feud.

But the heir’s persona was not even the sum of all the ancestor’s rights and duties in connection with real estate.  It has been said already that every fee descends specifically, and not as incident to a larger universitas.  This appears not so much from the fact that the rules of descent governing different parcels might be different, 3 so that the same person would not be heir to both, as from the very nature of feudal property.  Under the feudal system in its vigor, the holding of land was only one [351] incident of a complex personal relation.  The land was forfeited for a failure to render the services for which it was granted; the service could be renounced for a breach of correlative duties on the part of the lord. 1 It rather seems that, in the beginning of the feudal period under Charlemagne, a man could only hold land of one lord. 2 Even when it had become common to hold of more than one, the strict personal relation was only modified so far as to save the tenant from having to perform inconsistent services.  Glanvill and Bracton 3 a tell us that a tenant holding of several lords was to do homage for each fee, but to reserve his allegiance for the lord of whom he held his chief estate; but that, if the different lords should make war upon each other, and the chief lord should command the tenant to obey him in person, the tenant ought to obey, saving the service due to the other lord for the fee held of him.

We see, then, that the tenant had a distinct persona or status in respect of each of the fees which he held.  The rights and duties incident to one of them had no relation to the rights and duties incident to another.  A succession to one had no connection with the succession to another.  Each succession was the assumption of a distinct personal relation, in which the successor was to be determined by the terms of the relation in question.