[Sidenote: Tribal character of the manor as a judicial unit.] It may be worth while in this connection to allude to another general feature of the manorial estate on both sides of the Channel which if not directly of tribal origin must at least have worked in close sympathy with tribal custom. The gesithcund man officially charged with the control of a district or estate easily became in a manorial sense lord of the dependent tenants upon it. And the judicial and magisterial adjunct to the lordship became a prevalent feature of the typical manor. We have seen that the ‘sac and soc’ of later times may have grown from the root of the tribal principle involved in the sacredness of the precinct or area of protection of the chieftain and, in degree, of every grade of tribesman who possessed a homestead. How large a place this principle occupied is shown by the prominence of the _fredus_ in Frankish law and of the _mundbyrd_ in the early Anglo-Saxon laws. The manor was a complex product of many factors, and tribal custom was certainly one of them. [Sidenote: Was it a family holding?] Once again, what kind of a holding was that of the twelve-hyndeman? Was it a family holding, and what were the rules of succession? [Sidenote: Place names in favour of its being sometimes a family holding.] Unfortunately, we do not know how far the immigrants came in kindreds and families or as followers and ‘gesiths’ of military chieftains. But, in any case, if we may take the evidence of place-names the great number of patronymic names of places would lead to the supposition that the holdings were family holdings. The _ham_ may at first have been the estate of a gesithcund man held direct of the king with gafolgeldas and geburs under him holding yardlands and doing work on his demesne. But when it becomes an _ingham_ the patronymic termination points to the lordship of the manor having been held, as time went on, jointly, in somewhat the same way as the Cymric chieftainship in the gwely. His sons and grandsons and great-grandsons may really have had their rights of maintenance all along, and ultimately, if they were allowed to do so, they may have sometimes divided the inheritance instead of continuing to hold it jointly. Tribal instincts working alone would probably follow some such line as this. But it is easy to see that the nearer the holding of the twelve-hyndeman approached to a benefice or office the stronger would be the tendency towards single succession instead of divisions among heirs.