DOMESDAY SURVEY 



reaping, mowing, and hay-making were of necessity confined to one 

 season of the year, the carrying service and the ploughing, to say nothing 

 of the work on the mill-dam, were not so restricted. This early occur- 

 rence of ' merchet,' the especial test of servile status at a later period, 

 deserves particular notice. 1 



As to the lord's powers of jurisdiction the phrase ' sicut tune temporis 

 tenebam de rege ' is noteworthy, for as Professor Maitland says, ' whether 

 the Conqueror or either of his sons would have admitted that any justice 

 could be done in England that was not his justice, we may fairly doubt.' 2 

 We could especially wish to know how many of these ' franchises ' had 

 been possessed by ' Ulsi,' the pre-Conquest owner of Hodsock, to which, 

 as we have seen, Blyth was appurtenant. The manner in which the survey 

 is drawn up in Nottinghamshire implies that the relation between a manor 

 and its soke had existed before 1066, but the whole question is too wide 

 to be discussed here. In the case of Blyth it is complicated by the fact 

 that that vill contained no sokemen in 1086, and in a case of this kind 

 Professor Maitland would suspect that there has been some depression of 

 the peasantry. 3 Certainly, as might be expected, sokemen are charac- 

 teristic of sokeland, but it would be easy to carry this argument too far. 

 Roger de Busli's fief contains some instances to the point. He held 

 widely in Oswardbeck wapentake, and we have seen that the king 

 possessed much of this wapentake as ' sokeland ' belonging to his manor 

 of Mansfield. If, therefore, we turn to those vills which are surveyed 

 partly as royal sokeland and partly as manors on Roger de Busli's fief, 

 we may arrange their population in the following table : 



Sokeland Manors 



Sokemen Villeins Honiara Sokemen Villeins BorJars 



Gringley on the Hill .6 i i 0106 



561 085 



13 2 3 415 



6 i o 4 25 o 



. 24 II 7 2 22 



12 i 18 3 o 3 



211 O 8 I 



Misterton 



Walkeringham 



Wheatley 



Sturton-le-Steeple 



Clayworth 



Clarborough . 



These figures show that general distribution of sokemen which was 

 to be expected; they constitute 55 per cent, of the population on the 

 sokeland as against nearly 15 per cent, on the manors. On the other 

 hand, the fact that 23 villeins appear in the former and 13 sokemen 

 in the latter reminds us that these classes were too nearly related in 

 economic position for them to be mutually exclusive ; they were rather 

 differentiated by varieties of tenure and customary service than by any 

 fundamental distinctions of origin or status. 



One of the four typical ' escheats ' mentioned in Magna Carta was 

 the honour of Nottingham, which is represented in Domesday by the fief 

 of William Peverell. The origin alike of the man and of his name is 



1 This charter deserves re-editing. The Monasticm copy omits the witnesses, who have to be 

 supplied from the abstract given by Thoroton, Hist of Notts, iii, 494. 

 1 Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 85. ' 'Ibid. 



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