only legitimate sons inherited the paternal estate. By the Welsh custom all sons, legitimate or otherwise, had their shares, or in early centuries fought for them. Giraldus, writing in the twelfth century, tells us of the contention of legitimate and illegitimate sons for shares of the paternal estate. (2) By the custom of Archenfeld, like that of Kent, daughters inherited if there were no sons. Under the Welsh custom they did not. (3) By the custom of Archenfeld, like that of Kent, widows were entitled to their dower of half their husbands’ customary estate. Under the Welsh custom they had no dower.
The resemblances between the other local customs are also remarkable. In Kent, if a tenant in gavelkind was convicted of crime and executed, his land was not forfeited, but went to his heirs. This was known as ‘the father to the bough, the son to the plough’ custom,[1] and was a rare privilege,[2] which the people of Archenfeld also had. In Kent, a tenant in gavelkind had the power of bequeathing his land to whom he pleased, and the people of Archenfeld had a similar privilege in respect to land they acquired.
The most remarkable of these parallel customs is, however, that under which the men of Kent claimed as their immemorial right the privilege in war of being marshalled in front of the King’s army, a claim that was recognised.[3] The men of Archenfeld claimed and had allowed to them the same honourable distinction.[4] These remarkable coincidences clearly indicate a Kentish colony.
This district of Herefordshire appears to have been in any case occupied by Teutonic settlers at an early period, and to have become an outlying part of Mercia by the end of the seventh century. Ceolred, King of Mercia, dated a charter ‘in loco Arcencale,’ probably only a variation of the name, early in the eighth century.
