Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society--I

Abstract

tN THE FIRST PART ofthis paper,l the structural consequences | of the bilateral reckoning of kinship association were mentioned. It is s evident that Ego-centred bilateral kin groups cannot persist as continuing units in the structure of social relatonships. When a focal relaeve dies, the group loses its identity, although its former members still find themselves within the orbit of kin groups, overlapping, but not, except in the case of the consanpneal groups centred on siblings, exactly coinciding with the first. Anthropologists recognize that this system is in contrast urith unilineal descent systems, in which groups are formed that persist over the generaiions and may exercise coxporate rights over persons and things. One would not expect that a bilateral lfin group of the type we have been discussing would, as a whole, own anything (except its interest in Ego), since there can be no continuity of possession. A priori, then, we could predict the absence of clear evidence in Anglo-Saxon records of the pre-eleventh century showing that a kin group could be a landowner. Nevertheless, despite lack of evidence from la^vs and other sources (noted by Liebermann2), the theory has been put forward3 that some form of communal tenure existed. The basic assumptions of Anglo-Saxon kinship reckoning make this unlikely. When wills mention land as being unalienable from a kin group (as in the will of WolEgeat of Donington4), they do not imply that land held by a group as a whole shall pass to another group as a whole, but that land held by an individual is to go to another individual with the proviso that the latter shall give it to some third individual within a certain range of kin. This by no means implies communal ownership. If a kin group as a whole was not an heir, who, out of a set of recognized relatives, was likely to succeed to an estate? Certain commonly accepted notions about the prevalence of certain forms of tenure are of little help to us, since they are not precise enough. Gavelkind, considered to be a traditional form of land tenure in Kent, appears first to have referred to tenure by the payment of fixed services. Later this tenure system was taken to include partible inheritance. rn I205, a form of the word gavelkind was so used in the Rotuli Chartarum I60/I. From he sixteenth century onwards gavelkind was often used to denote