170 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



to the meaning of socman ; for, altliougli the two words may 

 have been, and probably were, derived from the same source, 

 yet there is no likelihood that either was derived from the 

 other. Now it is probable that socagium (socage) was derived 

 from the Anglo-Saxon s6c ; but it is almost certain that soche- 

 inannus was so derived. From the meaning of s6c, therefore^ 

 we can deduce, not what was the meaning of sochemanmis at 

 any particular epoch, whether at the time of the Conquest or 

 two hundred years later, but what must have been its meaning 

 when the word was first formed. 



iSoc, in Latin Soclia, is the territory of the jurisdiction of a 

 thegn. As the village community was transformed into a 

 manor, its tenitoiy came to be regarded as the propert}^ of the 

 thegn or country gentleman, the " lord of the manor " of feudal 

 times. More than this, as the development of feudal institu- 

 tions went on, he became " not only a proprietor, but a prince,'" 

 and the villagers not only his tenants, but his subjects. This 

 was a gradual process. The rights of jurisdiction were at first 

 granted to individual thegns, as a special privilege, oy franchise 

 as it was called. Some received them, others did not. A law 

 of Edward the Confessor* contrasts " barones qui curias suas 

 habent de hominibus suis" with "barones qui judicia non 

 habent," Again, the franchise was not always in the same 

 degTee. Full powers of jurisdiction, civil and criminal, were 

 comprised under the terms " sac, soc, toll, team and infang- 

 thef"; a lesser degree, relating only to civil cases and j)etty 

 offences, was "sac and soc," or, very frequently, simply wc. 

 Domesday Book gives the names of 35 persons, thegus and 

 persons of high rank — among them Queen Edith and the 

 Bishop of Durham — who had "sac, soc, toll and team" in Lin- 

 colnshire ; but in the city of Lincoln alone there were 12 who 

 had " sac and soc " : one of them being mentioned specially as 

 having also " Toll and Theim." After the Norman Conquest, 

 when the feudal institutions had become fully developed, and 



* Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 74. 



