human
as Lord Coke put it,
gpt
and so it came about that the holder had fixity of tenure while he did his service. His position steadily improved, the slave became free, the servile toil a money payment, and now the court agenda merely register changes of title. This account of the manor may serve for description, but does not represent the real origin, which has not yet been exactly ascertained. It was a fragment of Old England, with a lord usually of Norman race as head, and the relations between head and members elaborated and controlled by the theories and devices of the mediæval lawyer. As manorial law was custom, old local usages were preserved unaltered; thus, whilst the root idea of feudalism was that the eldest son should inherit his father's land, and the manor itself did so descend, within it an extraordinary diversity of usage obtained. By a custom similar to that of Gavelkind (in Kent), the copyholder's estate was sometimes parted equally among all his sons. In other places, Borough-English prevailed, that is, the youngest son took everything, to the exclusion of his elder brothers; nay, by an odd application of the maxim