Since G. C. Homans first published his accounts of inheritance customs in medieval England, there has been some revival of interest in this aspect of English social history. It has been found that arrangements were less rigid, and hence more varied, than once thought, while it is now clear that regional patterns can often be recognized only as broad generalizations — different practices were sometimes followed in close proximity, even within a single township. Recent work has concentrated on forms of partible inheritance, emphasizing apparent differences between the effects of this and impartible inheritance, and stressing the practical advantages of partibility. In comparison, there are few detailed studies of customs of single son inheritance as followed in a peasant community. The present paper is an attempt to reduce this gap by examining succession to property in the Chiltern Hills, an area of primogeniture, during the thirteenth and early fourteeenth centuries, that is, the period for which adequate documentary evidence is available before the widespread depopulation and social disruptions of the mid-fourteenth century. Chiltern custom was similar to the third of the three main forms of impartible descent outlined by Homans in that it “preserved the principle that a tenement ought to descend to only one son of the last holder, while allowing the holder himself to choose which one of his sons was to be heir.” Apart from the actual mechanism of inheritance and succession, considerable interest attaches to the practical implementation of Chiltern custom — how, in fact, descent of property was related to the general economic situation — and especially to an examination, in the Chiltern context, of the contention that partible inheritance tended to favour an increase in population whereas impartibility meant stability of population.