168 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



treated, that there are many questions raised by an examina- 

 tion of these documents, which have never been satisfactorily 

 answered. Among these is the precise status of the different 

 classes of population enumerated. 



The whole population recorded in Domesday Book is 283,242 ; 

 the heads of families only, it will be remembered, and, in the 

 main, only of the rural parts of England. Tliese are enumer- 

 ated in several different classes, to the four largest of which 

 our attention will chiefly be confined. These are : the villam, 

 numbering 108,407 ; the hordarii, 82,119 ; the sochemanni, 

 23,072 ; the liheri homines (free men), 12,138. There are also 

 25,156 slaves ; but these do not come within the scope of our 

 inquiry. 



[The pages wliicli discuss the mllam, bordaru and libei'i homines will 

 be omitted, except the summary which follows of the general results of 

 the inquiry.] 



1. The villani appear to have been in the main the body of 

 the ceorls or common freemen ; the representative of the primi- 

 tive Tillage Communities (see Maine, Yill. Comm., p. 82). 

 " From all that we can gatlier on the subject, it seems that 

 they were situated on the outside of the demesne land, and in 

 'common-field ' culture." Larking's " Domesday Book of Kent," 

 App., p. 30. 



2. The hordarii were those who, through misfortune or im- 

 providence, had lost their little estates, and been reduced to 

 the condition of common laborers ; tog^ether with emancipated 

 slaves and such others as floated to the several localities from 

 one place or another. Tliese had cottages (horcT), not in the 

 " village " proper, but on the lord's demesne, or "in-land"; 

 they became the villains in gross of feudal times, and their 

 holdings were in time transformed into copyholds (see again 

 Larking). 



3. The liberi homines were independent freeholders, discon- 

 nected with the regular village or manorial organization of the 

 peasantry ; the large numbers of them that we find in Norfolk,, 



