The problem of eldest/youngest is complicated by the following:
‘By the Elizabethan period a man could bequeath his copyhold land as he
chose unless limitations were named in the indentures covering specific
pieces of land, or there were particulars in the customs of the manors
forbidding it. On certain manors, the custom of “Borough English”
prevailed. This required that the copyholder’s land must go to his
youngest rather than his eldest son as was the case in the common-law
usage. Mr. Copinger has estimated that as many as eighty manors in Suffolk
were governed by this custom (The English Yeoman, pp. 128-9).’
Borough English aside it may be that William Carpenter(1) was bound
neither by primogeniture nor any other system as Campbell states above.
Perhaps a careful look at the manor survey on the whole will reveal
something?
BC