230 Wisconsm Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



development of another class above them ; second, by the in- 

 crease in number and degradation in character, of the services 

 by which they hold their lands. In other respects the classes 

 are identical in character, and we may fairly infer that the 

 neii of the twelfth century, and the consuetudinarii of the thir- 

 teenth, are the same as the villani of Domesday Book. This 

 view is supported by the fact that the term villenargium is 

 twice applied, in the Cartulary of Gloucester," to the tenure 

 of these consuetudinarii. 



The question next arises, what was the oiigin of the liberi 

 lenentes — a class that lias come into existence since the time of 

 Domesday Book ; for the liberi homines of Domesday Book 

 are almost exclusively confined to two or three counties (Nor- 

 folk, Suffolk and Essex) ; and that document gives only villani 

 and hordarii in manors where, two centuries later, we find h'heri 

 tenentes. An examination of the lists of liberi tenentes will show, 

 as has been already remarked, that there was a verj' great 

 disparity in their condition ; the Extenta Manerii distinguishes 

 those who hold by Knight's service and those who hold by 

 socage. Those who hold by Knight's service need no ex- 

 planation ; they were members of the aristocracy, who had 

 received grants of land in the manors, but were broadly sepa- 

 rated from the other tenants. The tenants in socage, on the 

 other hand, appear to have been specially privileged villani^ 

 In the manor of Ledene, for example, nearly all the free ten- 

 ants appear also as customary tenants — that is, they held two 

 estates at a time (not at all an uncommon thing), and these 

 two estates were of different rank, — the one free, the other 

 servile. In some cases, again, the freehold is precisely the 

 virgate or half-virgate of the customary estate; and the free- 

 holder would appear to have received the special privilege of 

 setting apart his strip of land from the strips of the rest of the 

 villagers, fencing it oflf, cultivating it after his own system, and 

 paying for it in money instead of in services. In other caseS;. 



1 Extenta de Lutlethone, p. 37; Linkeholte, p. 43. 



