In the year 1741 Thomas Robinson of Lincoln’s Inn published, a work called, in brief, The Common law of Kent; or the Customs of Gavelkind and which became known, even mere briefly, as Robinson on Gavelkind. It was a classic of its kind and went through, albeit at somewhat pedestrian pace, five editions; the fifth appeared in 1897.
   Gavelkind was a form of tenure found chiefly in Kent and was there so usual that land was presumed to be held in gavelkind unless the contrary was proved, largely as the result of numerous disgavelling Acts, its importance became eroded in later years and the writing was on the wall when in 1913 the Council of the Kent Archaeological Society resolved that ‘This Society deprecates any statutory enactment which would abolish Gavelkind tenure in Kent’.  In the event, gavelkind survived as long as, but no longer than, its major competitor, the rule of primogeniture. It died in 1925 and with it went, by the property legislation of that year, all other existing modes rules and canons of descent. Previous legislation had already, three years 

before, precipitated the death throes of the English manor.
   The primary characteristic of gavelkind was that on intestacy land descended. equally to all male heirs in the same degree, the eldest son being given no such priority as was afforded by the common law of England. There were other differences from the general law affecting such matters as a widow’s dower and the interest in a wife’s lands taken by her husband on her death. Another refinement was that an infant holding land in gavelkind could convey it at the age of fifteen.
   By a quirk of history, much information about the long defunct manor of Scotgrove is available in the pages of Robinson on Gavelkind., this because Scotgrove was the subject of a leading case in that field which came before the Court of Common Pleas in the reign of Edward II. The case, Gatewyk v. Gatewyk, was something of a medieval Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. That it should have become a leading case is in itself odd, since there is no evidence that it was ever decided. For the historian,