Gavelkind

But those are important acts.

The exact same time, uh, the Speaker of the Commons, it's a guy called Sir John Davies, who-- and he's very good at self-promotion through his own law reports, which are really just a strong vindication about, "Look at me, I'm wonderful." Um, but he's very adamant that the two major cornerstones of the reform of the law is getting rid of English gavel- or Irish gavelkind and tanistry.

Gavelkind is simply the way that you inherit property, that it tends to be subdivided more or less equally amongst the, uh, male descendants of the owner, as whereas in the English system would traditionally go to the eldest or primogeniture.

And also tanistry, whereby the leadership of the, the kin group or the family doesn't always automatically go to the eldest.

There's, uh, the idea of tanistry in the Gaelic system.

That same idea of ownership being fluid also shows up in medieval inheritance customs.

Gavelkind was a partible inheritance system mainly in Kent and later Ireland.

Instead of giving the whole estate to one son, lands were split evenly among all heirs.

English common law favored primogeniture, putting the eldest child in control.

This equal split prevented large estates from concentrating power, spreading land among families.

It also led to smaller farms and a more dispersed peasant class over time.

Gavelkind survived until the early twentieth century before abolition by statute.

Even today, the legacy of partible inheritance can be seen in some landholding traditions across Britain.