When a medieval man had only daughters, was his eldest entitled by law or custom to receive more/better/her choice of his estates and goods, with the younger receiving the residue? Or were assets usually equally distributed? Or did the dying father/
testator have discretion to distribute assets among daughters however he pleased?

Was there sometimes maneuvering among legatees to maximize their share, depending on their spouses or on being single and hoping to be left enough to help them them attract a partner?

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If there were only daughters, the normal practice was that they would inherit jointly, each with an equal share. This was often followed by the Common Law action (in England) of partition, so that they could divide the property.

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On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 11:13:14 PM UTC-7, vance...@yahoo.com wrote:

If there were only daughters, the normal practice was that they would inherit jointly, each with an equal share. This was often followed by the Common Law action (in England) of partition, so that they could divide the property.

Just to amplify this, you often would see record of someone holding a 1/4 share of this, or a 1/3 share of that manor, and this reflects the undividued inheritance from a set of daughters sometime in the past. In extremus, one might see soemthing like a
1/24th share, representing an undivided 1/3 of 1/2 of 1/4 of the manor, following several successive generations of sequential undivided inheritance among daughters. Similarly, one will see advowsons (the right of the feudal lord to nominate the
successor to the local parish) alternate among different families, again reflecting undivided sharing of the representatives of a set of past daughters. This does not mean those holding a share were descended form the daughters - partial shares of land
or advowsons could be transferred in the same way as other property..

As to preference for the older, legally there was none, but there was a bias. If the representatives of coheiresses reached a partition agreement, it does seem more common than not for the eldest daughter's branch to get that equally-valued portion that
included the 'family seat', but there was no stipulation in law that this must be the case. Similarly, with a divided advowson, the rotation would commence with the representatives of the eldest daughter.

taf

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On Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 4:05:11 AM UTC-4, taf wrote:

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 11:13:14 PM UTC-7, vance...@yahoo.com wrote:

If there were only daughters, the normal practice was that they would inherit jointly, each with an equal share. This was often followed by the Common Law action (in England) of partition, so that they could divide the property.

Just to amplify this, you often would see record of someone holding a 1/4 share of this, or a 1/3 share of that manor, and this reflects the undividued inheritance from a set of daughters sometime in the past. In extremus, one might see soemthing like

a 1/24th share, representing an undivided 1/3 of 1/2 of 1/4 of the manor, following several successive generations of sequential undivided inheritance among daughters. Similarly, one will see advowsons (the right of the feudal lord to nominate the
successor to the local parish) alternate among different families, again reflecting undivided sharing of the representatives of a set of past daughters. This does not mean those holding a share were descended form the daughters - partial shares of land
or advowsons could be transferred in the same way as other property..

As to preference for the older, legally there was none, but there was a bias. If the representatives of coheiresses reached a partition agreement, it does seem more common than not for the eldest daughter's branch to get that equally-valued portion

that included the 'family seat', but there was no stipulation in law that this must be the case. Similarly, with a divided advowson, the rotation would commence with the representatives of the eldest daughter.

taf

taf and Vance, Thank you so much...very helpful to learn. I'm thinking my Christopher FitzRandolph's wife, Jane/Joan Langton, was the older co-heiress of her father Cuthbert, and looking at some suits that involve the sisters and their spouses. taf, you
mentioned transfers of land (and advowsons)...Do I want to look at feet of fines for these?

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On Monday, May 23, 2022 at 12:26:28 PM UTC-7, Girl57 wrote:

taf and Vance, Thank you so much...very helpful to learn. I'm thinking my Christopher FitzRandolph's wife, Jane/Joan Langton, was the older co-heiress of her father Cuthbert, and looking at some suits that involve the sisters and their spouses. taf,

you mentioned transfers of land (and advowsons)...Do I want to look at feet of fines for these?

Could be in feet of fines, could be in private charters, could be no record survives. Often you just find a share in different hands and never can figure out how it came to be.

taf

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On Saturday, 21 May 2022 at 21:59:28 UTC+1, Girl57 wrote:

When a medieval man had only daughters, was his eldest entitled by law or custom to receive more/better/her choice of his estates and goods, with the younger receiving the residue? Or were assets usually equally distributed? Or did the dying father/

testator have discretion to distribute assets among daughters however he pleased?

Was there sometimes maneuvering among legatees to maximize their share, depending on their spouses or on being single and hoping to be left enough to help them them attract a partner?

I can't comment on medieval practice, but can on early modern.

It is likely that an 'only daughter' scenario would be known about for years, and so there would be plenty of time for everyone to plan ahead. The basic principle would be to keep any central landed estate together (if possible) under the husband of one
of the daughters, and to provide for the others either with cash settlements or additional non-central land. The problem lay in raising the cash. In general, this favoured the eldest of the daughters, since her marriage might be years before dowries
could be funded for her younger sisters. Sometimes the raising of cash might involve mortgaging the estate.

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On Monday, May 23, 2022 at 10:16:17 PM UTC-5, taf wrote:
...

Could be in feet of fines, could be in private charters, could be no record survives. Often you just find a share in different hands and never can figure out how it came to be.

When you have fines indicating such a division, can any reliance be placed on the wording of the fines in trying to deduce how the division came about? In the particular case of concern to me (mid-1300's), I have two fines in which two married couples (
of different surnames) are found as querents obtaining the two moieties of a manor (the deforciants apparently being attorneys), with the two halves appearing frequently thereafter in possession of their respective families. A reasonably well-documented
genealogy can be composed for (one branch of) the family which held the manor (or at least a moiety) from the late twelfth century to the 1330's, but there was an early division into moieties (late 1100's or early 1200's), and it is not clear whether
this division still existed in the 1330's (i.e., had the other branch become extinct or did the well-documented branch still only hold a moiety?). In any case, previous possession of the manor does not appear to concern the families of the two husbands
in the above fines. Since attorneys acted as deforciants in both of the above fines, it is hard to tell at first glance whether this was just the manor being sold off in halves, or the manor being inherited by two coheiresses. What makes me suspect
that the latter was the case is the residuary heirs named in the two fines. Both fines left the respective moieties (plus other lands named in each) to the lawfully begotten issue of the married couple, with remainder to the right heirs of the wife.
This leads me to believe that it was the two wives who had some claim to the respective moieties, and that they might have either been coheiresses (if the manor had been reunited by the 1330's) or individual heiresses of the two moieties (if the manor
was still divided in the 1330's). Plausible arguments can be made for either of these two scenarios. Is there something to this line of thought, or am I reading too much into the residuary heirs named in these fines?

Stewart Baldwin

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On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 1:11:30 AM UTC-7, Chris Dickinson wrote:

It is likely that an 'only daughter' scenario would be known about for years, and so there would be plenty of time for everyone to plan ahead.

This reminds me of a 14th century case where the father of two daughters executed paired fines the same day. In each he agreed that a share of his land belonged to the daughter and her husband, and they in turn agreed to enfeoff it back to him for life.
In so doing, he preempted the anticipated post-mortem co-inheritance and defined the partition. I don't know enough about the properties, nor which daughter was older, so I don't know how equal the partition or whether the elder daughter was favored.

taf

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On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 8:54:47 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

On Monday, May 23, 2022 at 10:16:17 PM UTC-5, taf wrote:
...

Could be in feet of fines, could be in private charters, could be no record survives. Often you just find a share in different hands and never can figure out how it came to be.

When you have fines indicating such a division, can any reliance be placed on the wording of the fines in trying to deduce how the division came about?

In my experience, some fines contain clues to what might be going on, but they rarely allow definitive interpretation, and to this day highly-cited genealogists are jumping to the conclusion that fines unambiguously reveal relationships.

Plausible arguments can be made for either of these two scenarios. Is there something to this line of thought, or am I reading too much into the residuary heirs named in these fines?

That is usually how I interpret them. The alternatives seem less likely. It would be an odd provision for a straight-out 'sale' for such a reversion chain favoring the wife to be generated, and were the land to have originated with the husband's family,
and represents a marriage settlement to protect the wife, I would still expect a residual reversion back to the original owners.

What you can't readily deduce from fines, if I have understood the scenario correctly, is which of your two models is correct - that the wives are the co-heiresses, or if they are just representatives of an ancient division.

taf

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On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 12:35:26 PM UTC-4, taf wrote:

On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 8:54:47 AM UTC-7, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

On Monday, May 23, 2022 at 10:16:17 PM UTC-5, taf wrote:
...

Could be in feet of fines, could be in private charters, could be no record survives. Often you just find a share in different hands and never can figure out how it came to be.

When you have fines indicating such a division, can any reliance be placed on the wording of the fines in trying to deduce how the division came about?

In my experience, some fines contain clues to what might be going on, but they rarely allow definitive interpretation, and to this day highly-cited genealogists are jumping to the conclusion that fines unambiguously reveal relationships.

Plausible arguments can be made for either of these two scenarios. Is there something to this line of thought, or am I reading too much into the residuary heirs named in these fines?

That is usually how I interpret them. The alternatives seem less likely. It would be an odd provision for a straight-out 'sale' for such a reversion chain favoring the wife to be generated, and were the land to have originated with the husband's family,

and represents a marriage settlement to protect the wife, I would still expect a residual reversion back to the original owners.

What you can't readily deduce from fines, if I have understood the scenario correctly, is which of your two models is correct - that the wives are the co-heiresses, or if they are just representatives of an ancient division.

taf

All, thank you so much for your replies...Am going to read through carefully, later today. Haven't started looking yet at feet of fines but will jump in this weekend. I think trying to find anything that John Coddington and others didn't already know on
FitzRandolphs might be tough to impossible, but it's interesting and helping me learn...and I guess we can't ever tell when we stumble on a reference, far afield, that might shed light.

I did find references in a Topography of Nottinghamshire book re: Willoughby shares in the manor of Kirkby in Ashfield back into 14th century -- Langtons also involved -- so it seems these families had been acquainted for a very long time by the time
Christopher FitzRandolph went from Yorkshire to Notts.

Received a document from National Archives re: a suit I'm hoping will reveal an important relationship, but I'm struggling to read even the title (in English...). I have my trusty printouts of secretarie alphabet, and I'm determined to make some progress!

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