conclusion that ‘almost everywhere in Somerset the index of nigrescence is greater than in Wiltshire or in Gloucestershire east of the Severn.’[1]
It is of some interest to note that among the early settlers in Somerset there were colonists from Sussex. In the great manor of Taunton Dean the customs which prevailed were almost identical with those in the Rape of Lewes. This great liberty in Somerset resembled in its constitution a Sussex rape in containing hundreds within it. These hundreds were Holwey, Hull, Nailsborne, Staplegrove, Taunton Borough, and Taunton Castle.[2]
The chief customs of the tenants within the barony of Lewes and within the manor of Taunton Dean may be compared under the following heads,[3] in which they were practically the same:
1. The tenants were able to alienate their land, and so to dispose of it by a process of surrender in court, and this privilege extended in both districts to parcels of the land as well as the whole.
2. The lands passed from a tenant to his heir at his death.
3. By the custom both at Lewes and at Taunton the widow inherited the estate for her life. She was admitted for life by the court.
4. On both manors if the husband made a surrender in favour of some other person than his wife, even if done on his deathbed before legal witnesses, the widow lost her right to succeed.
5. The guardianship of infant heirs, at Lewes and at Taunton, was, by the custom of both places, entrusted to one or more of the next of the infant’s kindred, to whom the land could not descend.
6. By the custom of both manors the youngest son
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