Bruce wrote: << << "and we may assume that William2 (b. ca. 1605), by virtue of being named with William1 in Shalbourne Westcourt tenant records, was his father's eldest son and heir." >> >> << I think this is mistaken. The youngest was usually named in manor records, with the intention to maintain family claims to the land for the longest period of time. Clearly William (2) was the youngest. >> Not according to archivist Andrew Crookston at the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, Trowbridge, England (soon to be the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Chippenham). I explicitly raised this issue with him a few months ago, and he confirmed that extending the copyhold beyond the father's lifetime--a matter of inheritance under the old English law of primogeniture--was typically done by naming the eldest son as co-tenant. In light of the legal (and cultural) significance of the eldest son--only to whom, incidentally, did a family crest devolve--the youngest son had little standing among a family's male children. In seventeenth-century England, family claims to land--whether by copyhold or freehold--were almost always perpetuated through the eldest son, who was the "heir at law" of his father's real estate. A father could circumvent the law of primogeniture by making a will whose provisions diverged from it (though most men of modest means left no wills, and those who did typically had other purposes). Similarly, a copyholding father could name someone other than his eldest son as co-tenant, but it would violate a principle deeply rooted in English common law and was rarely done. A copyhold was, by custom, a semipermanent lease from a manorial lord. Having in practical terms many of the features of a freehold, a copyhold was not so tenuous as to require such strategies as making the youngest son co-tenant so as "to maintain family claims to the land for the longest period of time." A copyhold's continuity through many generations of the same family was virtually guaranteed by custom and the manorial court (on which tenants sat as judges). The perpetuation of a family's copyhold was easily accomplished by adding the next-generation eldest son's name when tenancy was renewed (technically, surrendered and regranted). When a man died intestate and a co-tenant was not named in manorial records, either the law of primogeniture applied (the copyhold was regranted to the eldest son), or, as was the custom on some manors, the copyhold was regranted to all the sons (and the representatives of deceased ones). Under such circumstances, I can't imagine a copyhold's being regranted to the youngest son alone, without the formal consent of each and all older brothers. William2 is named along with his father in the record of their Westcourt copyhold's inception, on 1 June 1608, when William1 was about 33 years old (and his namesake son was about 3). Why, at that age, would the father have thought that William2 would be his last son? (The law of primogeniture almost certainly arose, in part, out of the inherent uncertainty as to [1] the sex of future children and who among them would survive ["a bird in the hand . . ."] and [2] the longevity of the father. Of course it also prevented the dilution of family wealth from one generation to the next.) Finally, given the naming traditions of the time, the son receiving his father's forename was far more likely to be the eldest than the youngest. In that the Carpenters' copyhold was granted to an entirely different family a few months before William1, William2, and the latter's family emigrated, it's quite possible that William2 was his father's _only_ son (by that time, at least). Gene Z. ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com