《亨利·萨默·梅恩作品选·早期制度史演讲（三）（英文）》青少年教育文学精选.pdfVIP

亨利·萨默·梅恩作品选·早期制度史演讲(三)(英文) [英] 亨利·萨默·梅恩 主编 辽宁出版集团电子图书公司 亨利·萨默·梅恩作品选·早期制度史演讲(三 [英] 亨利·萨默·梅恩 主编 辽宁出版集团电子图书公司 2005 年1 月28字数：45千 ISBN：L-YY-0253/ 定价：3.00 Lecture VII Ancient Divisions of the Family Before the establishment of the (English) common law, all the possessions within the Irish territories ran either in course of Tanistry or in course of Gavelkind. Every Signory or Chiefry with the portion of land which passed with it went without partition to the Tanist, who always came in by election or with the strong hand, and not by descent; but all inferior tenanties were partible between males in Gavelkind. (Sir J. Davis Reports, Le Cas de Gavelkind, Hil. 3, Jac. 1, before all the Judges.) This passage occurs in one of the famous cases in which the Anglo-Irish Judges affirmed the illegality of the native Irish tenures of land. They declared the English common law to be in force in Ireland, and thenceforward the eldest son succeeded, as heir-at-law, both to lands which were attached to a Signory and to estates which had been divided according to the peculiar Irish custom here called Gavelkind. The Judges thoroughly knew that they were making a revolution, and they probably thought that they were substituting a civilised institution for a set of mischievous usages proper only for barbarians. Yet there is strong reason for thinking that Tanistry is the form of succession from which Primogeniture descended, and that the Irish Gavelkind, which they sharply distinguished from the Gavelkind of Kent, was nothing more than an archaic form of this same institution, of which Courts in England have always taken judicial notice, and which prevailed far more widely on th