DOMESDAY SURVEY 



owners of land, nor can we be certain that they are consistent in their 

 enumeration of the members of the various social classes which were recog- 

 nized in 1086. But after all deductions have been made we still possess a 

 considerable amount of information respecting the condition of Leicestershire 

 at the period of the Conquest. We have already remarked on the absence 

 in this county of any great ecclesiastical properties of long standing, but 

 the number of vills which just before the Conquest had been held in whole 

 or in part by laymen of ' comital ' rank is no less striking. For convenience 

 of reference we arrange the latter in the following table : 



Earl Ralf Earl Waltheof 



'Valuif 

 s. d. 



'Valet' 



Valuit' 







d. 







Earl Morcar 



Croxton Kerrial . .10 o o 

 Nether Broughton ..300 

 ? Saltby 900 



o o Houghton on the Hill 



O O Oadby 



O O Peatling Magna 



O O Cosby 



5 o Willoughby Waterless 5 4 



Frolesworth 



Sharnford 



Heather 



Earl Harold 



17 O Barrow-on-Soar'J 

 800 Theddingworth \ Value not given 

 10 o o Kegworth J 



Valet ' 



d - 



100 



To this table should, no doubt, be added the land of the Countesses 

 Alveva and Godeva, and if we include in our list the possessions of King 

 Edward and his wife we shall find that at least one-quarter of the vills of 

 Leicestershire had stood in some definite relation, tenurial or justiciary, to 

 men of the highest position in the land. But Leicestershire is also dis- 

 tinguished from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire by the large estates which 

 had been held by Englishmen below the dignity of earl. We have already 

 noticed the number of instances in which a Norman tenant in chief has 

 entered into possession of the undivided lands of a single Englishman, and 

 the estates of such men as Ailric the son of Meriet, Leofric of Melton 

 Mowbray, and Harding, Earl Aubrey's predecessor, all tend to minimize 

 the distinction between the tenurial condition of the county as it existed 

 in 1066 and 1086. But for all this Leicestershire was far from being a fully 

 manorialized county even at the latter date. Some 275 vills are represented 

 in the county survey, and at least seventy per cent, of them are described 

 under two or more distinct headings. So far as we can tell, no steps had as 

 yet been taken towards bringing such great territorial aggregations as the 

 sokes of Rothley, Melton Mowbray, and Great Bowden under the manorial 

 organization with its distinction between demesne and villein land and its 

 regulated system of labour service, although the earl of Chester would seem 

 to have begun the process on the sokeland belonging to his great manor of 

 Barrow on Soar, where Domesday accounts for j\ ploughs as existing ' in 

 dominio^ Moreover 45 per cent, of the county population consisted of 

 sokemen, and the sokeman, whatever his origin, represented a type of 

 relationship between lord and man quite other than that which the Normans 

 were trying to express in the universal extension of the manorial formula. 

 On the whole the Leicestershire sokemen seem to have been very uniformly 



299 



