Borough English
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 3 anchored passages
in the texts
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
An English customary tenure favoring the youngest son, noted as related to the double-share privilege.
The proof that it is not essentially a privilege of the eldest son, we find in the circumstances that it is sometimes enjoyed by the father and sometimes by the youngest of the sons, and in this way it is connected with our own custom of Borough English, of which I shall have more to say presently.
‘Borough English,’ under which the youngest son and not the eldest succeeds to the burgage-tenements of his father, has from time immemorial being recognised as a widely diffused usage of which it is the duty of our Courts to take judicial notice, and many writers on our real property laws, from Littleton downwards, have attempted to account for it.
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
English custom of youngest-son inheritance, compared to the South Slavonian usage of the youngest son remaining at home.
and thus the Slavonian usage accurately reflects the earliest stage of the English custom of Borough English.