Good points all. Suspect you are right.
BC
Bruce wrote:
<< Campbell did not say Borough English was restricted to the Middle Ages
or
restricted to the counties Gene mentioned (from Wikipedia?).
Neither did I: "Those 'certain' manors where Borough English was the
custom
in the Middle Ages were primarily in Suffolk, Surrey, Middlesex, and
Sussex.
By the seventeenth century, some (if not many) of them had adopted
primogeniture, as apparently had _all_ Wiltshire manors" (see, for
example, Rosamond
Jane Faith, "Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval
England,"
_Agricultural History Review_ 14[1966]:77-95, at 81-84, 94-95, online at
_http://www.bahs.org.uk/14n2a1.pdf_ (
http://www.bahs.org.uk/14n2a1.pdf) ;
"Borough
English," in _Classic Encyclopedia_ [based on the 11th ed. of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica], online at
_http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Borough_English_
(
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Borough_English) ).
<< My reading of the 1621 Manor Survey does not indicate primogeniture
was
the rule. I will have another, more detailed look. Richard Carpenter is
still
a prime suspect for elder brother of William(2). >>
As previously indicated, there are additional reasons to doubt this:
"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? . . . [G]iven 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.
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