Presidential Address: Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England: II. Notions of Patrimony

Notions are potent but nebulous, often direct and determining in their effect but themselves indeterminate in origin and structure. My title is designed to circumvent two lines of thought which have largely circumscribed the study of inheritance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries hitherto. First, I shall say something here and there about succession, but it will be only a subsidiary part of the argument. Heritable title was not diminished by unsettled rules of succession. On the contrary, in the eleventh century as in the thirteenth, it was emphasised and nourished by the claims and counter-claims of competitors. In such disputes the opposing arguments were couched in a common language; it is the language, therefore, that will be my first concern. Second, for this same reason I shall also pay scant attention to the jurisdictional aspects of inheritance. To be sure, in post-Conquest England inheritance amounted not to a title but to a claim upon a lord; heritable title was realised when the lord admitted it; no concession by a tenant was as secure as it could be made until his lord had confirmed it.