arily
descend to the eldest son. The rules of succession which they followed
were entirely determined by the terms agreed upon between the grantor
and the beneficiary, or imposed by one of them on the weakness of the
other. The original tenures were therefore extremely various; not
indeed so capriciously various as is sometimes asserted, for all which
have hitherto been described present some combination of the modes of
succession familiar to Romans and to barbarians, but still exceedingly
miscellaneous. In some of them, the eldest son and his stock
undoubtedly succeeded to the fief before the others, but such
successions, so far from being universal, do not even appear to have
been general. Precisely the same phenomena recur during that more
recent transmutation of European society which entirely substituted
the feudal form of property for the domainial (or Roman) and the
allodial (or German). The allods were wholly absorbed by the fiefs.
The greater allodial proprietors transformed themselves into feudal
lords by conditional alienations of portions of their land to
dependants; the smaller sought an escape from the oppressions of that
terrible time by surrendering their property to some powerful
chieftain, and receiving it back at his hands on condition of service
in his wars. Meantime, that vast mass of the population of Western
Europe whose condition was servile or semi-servile--the Roman and
German personal slaves, the Roman _coloni_ and the German _lidi_--were
concurrently absorbed by the feudal organisation, a few of them
assuming a menial relation to the lords, but the greater part
receiving land on terms which in those centuries were considered
degrading. The tenures created during this era of universal
infeudation were as various as the conditions which the tenants made
with their new chiefs or were forced to accept from them. As in the
case of the benefices, the succession to some, but by no means to all,
of the estates followed the rule of Primogeniture. No sooner, however,
has the feudal system prevailed throughout the West, than it becomes
evident that Primogeniture has some great advantage over every other
mode of succession. It spread over Europe with remarkable rapidity,
the principal instrument of diffusion being Family Settlements, the
Pactes de Famille of France and Haus-Gesetze of Germany, which
universally stipulated that lands held by knightly service should
descend to the eldest son. Ultimately th