/1/
As late as Bracton, two centuries after the Norman conquest, the
heir was not the successor to lands alone, but represented his
ancestor in a much more general sense, as will be seen directly.
The office of executor, in the sense of heir, was unknown to the
Anglo-Saxons, /2/ and even in Bracton's time does not seem to
have been what it has since become. There is, therefore, no need
to go back further than to the early Norman period, after the
appointment of executors had become common, and the heir was more
nearly what he is now.
When Glanvill wrote, a little more than a century after the
Conquest, the heir was bound to warrant the reasonable gifts of
his ancestor to the grantees and their heirs; /3/ and if the
effects of the ancestor were insufficient to pay his debts, the
heir was bound to make up the deficiency from his own property.
/4/ Neither Glanvill nor his Scotch imitator, the Regiam
Majestatem, /5/ limits the liability to the amount of property
inherited from the same source. This makes the identification of
heir and ancestor as complete as that of the Roman law before
such a limitation was introduced by Justinian. On the other hand,
a century [348] later, it distinctly appears from Bracton, /1/
that the heir was only bound so far as property had descended to
him, and in the early sources of the Continent, Norman as well as
other, the same limitation appears.
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