The free tenants. share in the manorial husbandry. In the capacity of oxmen (bovarii) they were entrusted with the charge of the ploughteam on the lord's demesne 1. Sometimes, it is true, the bovarii were freemen 2, but the proportion of serfs to the ploughs on the demesne seems to justify the connexion which has been established between them. Already in 1086, however, they had begun to disappear, and in all likelihood they were absorbed into the class of bordars, whose increase in numbers was one of the most marked effects of the Norman Conquest. The passage from slavery to serfdom would be accomplished by settling them upon the soil, endowing them with a few acres of land, and exacting purely agricultural services. The tenants in villeinage formed an indispensable element in the structure of the manor. In this respect they differed fundamentally from the free tenants, who were not an integral part of the manorial system, but in a sense stood outside the manorial economy. Their position was exceptional. They were attached to the manor mainly by the relatively slight services which they owed to the lord in recognition of his authority over them. They were of course equally concerned with the other villagers in the joint agriculture and in the communal practices as to the rotation of crops, the use of the commons and the setting up of hedges, but they were considerably less implicated in the labour arrangements of the demesne. Many manors did not contain free tenants, and where they existed their privileged position sharply differentiated them from the villeins and cottagers. Their tenure was protected in the king's court, and they could call the lord himself to account if he encroached upon their proprietary rights. Their personal condition was that of freemen, and they asserted all the rights which a legal status bestows. Apart from these legal differences, there were others of an economic character. Their tenements lacked the uniformity of size that was distinctive of the unfree 1 Round in Vict. County Hist. Herefordshire, i. 288-289; Vict. County Hist. Essex, i. 361-362; Vict. County Hist. Warwickshire, i. 286. 2 This is admitted by Round in Vict. County Hist. Worcestershire, i. 274-276. See also Tait in Vict. County Hist. Shropshire, i. 302-303. 3 Ballard, Domesday Inquest, 113. 1 holdings. Traces of the original virgate system 1 still appeared among them, but its regularity had long been destroyed. The unity of the villein tenement was preserved by the practice of indivisible inheritance and by the restraints imposed on alienation. But the privileged tenants were permitted a scope of action incompatible with the maintenance of a uniform system of freeholds. There was a similar irregularity in the services with which the freeholds were burdened. They were seldom alike in any two cases, nor did they necessarily correspond to the size of the holding, but were in each case 2 separately determined between the lord and the individual tenant. The relation of the free tenant to the lord was in fact more in the nature of a contract; it was not cast in the rigid and unvarying mould which stamped the serfdom of the villein, and accordingly lent itself more easily to irregularities. Frequently the services were merely nominal and in any event did not include week-work on the lord's demesne, the distinguishing mark of base tenure. It is true that they were often responsible for boon-work at harvest-time, for the harvest was the critical period when none could be spared. At Finden in Derbyshire, for example, the holders of free land had to provide labour for six harvest days in the year, one man on the first day, two on the second, and their whole household on the subsequent days 3. Apart from this, however, their obligations took the shape of a money-rent. Altogether they appear as an exceptional class enjoying unusual advantages 4. and The class of free tenants, while clearly distinguished from Freemen the villeins by their status and the nature of their services, sokemen. comprised subdivisions among which a further distinction has now to be drawn. Domesday Book records the existence of two main groups of free tenants: the liberi homines and the sochemanni. In some counties the distinction between the two classes is clearly marked, and here the freemen and the sokemen appear definitely side by side. In other counties they are grouped under the same name, the term 2 Ibid. 345-346. 1 Vinogradoff, Villainage, 334-339. 3 liberi homines being applied in the eastern midlands and the term sochemanni in the southern counties, but even here the difference was not lost sight of, and is usually indicated by some additional phrase1. We can therefore scarcely regard the two groups as identical, or explain the names as simply local variations. None the less the line of demarcation between them is uncertain, for Domesday terminology is full of difficulties and the connotatio of its terms is variously interpreted. Indeed, it may very well have been that "the complication of tenures which had grown up under the English system was almost as obscure to the newcomers as it is to ourselves" 2. It is usual to derive the word sokeman from 'sake and soke', an 'alliterative jingle' implying the private jurisdiction of a lord. The sokeman is accordingly one who is subject to the jurisdiction of his lord, to whom he must render suit of court, while the freeman was admitted to the national courts. The difficulty, however, in the way of this interpretation is that many sokemen were suitors of the national courts, while on the other hand many freemen attended the court of a lord. On the whole the difference between the freemen and the sokemen appears to turn on their relation to their land. The freeman as a rule enjoyed full powers of disposal over his property. Domesday Book states that he 'held freely' and 'could go with his land where he would', an expression which implies that he was at liberty to sell or otherwise alienate his property. He could apparently at will dissolve the ties which connected him with his lord by 'receding', and placing his land under the protection of another lord. But the sokeman was restrained from selling his land, nor could he commend himself to another lord. He was bound to the soil, and if his position proved irksome he could only escape it by abandoning his holding and going forth a landless beggar. Thus while the liber homo and the sochemannus were alike personally free in 1 Ballard, Domesday Inquest, 113-114. 2 Round in Vict. County Hist. Essex, i. 359. 3 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 104-106, 135, 140; Vinogradoff, English Society, 124, 432-433. See also Ballard, op. cit. 117, 164. J. H. Round, Feudal England (1895), 24, 34; Vict, County Hist. Hampshire, i. 440. status, the former enjoyed greater liberty in relation to his tenure. The sokeman possessed no security against the arbitrary exaction of increased services, but the freeman could evade unfair obligations by transferring his land at will1. The dividing line was not, however, always uniform, for we hear of freemen who could not sell their land and of sokemen who were able to do so 2. At the time of the Domesday Inquest the free tenants, The growth of free though scattered over some twenty counties 3, formed an tenants appreciable element of the population only in Danish dis- due to :tricts. In Lincolnshire, where they exceeded the number of villeins and bordars combined, their percentage was as high as 45; in Norfolk it was 32, and in Suffolk 40. It seems most natural, therefore, to regard these as in the main Danish warriors who had settled on the soil without losing their freedom. Altogether, however, they embraced only 12 per cent. of the whole population. But the manorial rolls subsequent to the compilation of Domesday Book afford evidence of changes in the distribution and numbers of the class of free tenants. (1) The sokemen who, as we have seen, were freeholders but distinguished from the rest by special customs, appear outside the Danelaw and East Anglia. They are recorded in counties where Domesday Book does not mention them, and where their predecessors of the eleventh century were termed villeins. It is no doubt possible to infer an improvement in status, and to assume that these sokemen were formerly villeins who had emancipated themselves from the more servile burdens of villeinage 5, namely week-work, and so acquired a superior condition. But the appearance of these post-Domesday sokemen outside the Danelaw may be explained as the result of a change in terminology. (i.) Changes The Domesday Survey apparently included villani many peasants who, while responsible for some 1 Vinogradoff, English Society, 434-435. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 105. See map in Seebohm, Village Community, facing p. 86. among the 4 W. O. Massingberd, "The Lincolnshire Sokemen in English Hist. Review, xx. 699. 5 W. J. Ashley, English Economic History (1909) i. 25. For this suggestion I am indebted to Professor Vinogradoff. in termino logy. rural services, were in the main free and attended the royal courts. But at a subsequent period, when the distinction between those admitted to the royal courts and those under the lord's jurisdiction became the decisive test of tenure and status, and the primary factor in social grouping, these peasants obtained recognition as privileged tenants, and were henceforth termed sokemen. This is shown by the history of the men of Kent. To all intents and purposes most of them were free sokemen, and by this name were sometimes actually designated 1. They performed no week-work and discharged their obligations by the payment of a money-rent; their tenure was protected and their status was that of freemen. Thus in the thirteenth century "there was no villeinage in Kent "2; and yet in Domesday they are described as villeins. Their condition in the intervening period does not appear to have undergone any change in social advancement, but there had been a change in terminology. Further, some confusion may also arise from the fact that the term sokemen was sometimes extended to include tenants other than freeholders. The lawyers of the thirteenth century distinguished between three kinds of men, freemen, villeins and sokemen, and the sokemen enumerated in this classification were not freeholders at all, but privileged villeins confined for the most part to manors on the Ancient Demesne of the Crown. They differed from the ordinary villein in the legal protection afforded to their holdings and in the certainty of their services. "There is another kind of villeinage", says Bracton, "held of the king since the Conquest of England, called villein socage, which is villeinage but privileged. The tenants, for instance, of demesnes of the king have this privilege that they cannot be removed from the soil, as long as they are willing and able to do the required services they perform villein services, but certain and fixed "3. Their villeinage was thus exceptional 1 Vinogradoff, Villainage, 206. Il ad nul vylenage en Kent: Year Book, 30 Edw. I. p. 169. 3 Bracton, f. 209. Thus in 1282 the men of the bishop of Carlisle at Horncastle brought a writ against him for exacting other services than those due to him, and won their case: Vict. County Hist. Lincolnshire ii. 300. On the Ancient Demesne, see Vinogradoff, Villainage, c. 3. |
