iv. 1 DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 15 



ni cation, would have been left without effectual 

 legal supervision. Free landowners, who did not 

 belong to a soke, were obliged to attend the Court 

 of the Hundred ; the hundred being a division of 

 the county, generally of considerable extent. Such 

 owners were styled simply freemen, liberi homines, 

 or liberi tenentes ; but their position differed from 

 that of the sokemen merely as regarded the tribunal 

 which they were bound to attend, and their being or 

 not being under the protection of a lord. Hence, 

 when a new free tenure, the military, was introduced, 

 and it became necessary to discriminate the new 

 from the old free tenures, the term socage tenure 

 seems to have been extended to the freemen who 

 owed service to the hundred court, although a 

 public court, and was no longer confined, as in 

 Domesday, to those who attended the court of a 

 private person. The socmen are frequently men- 

 tioned in Domesday as bound to furnish inward 

 that is, to perform the duty of a local guard or 

 watch. They probably formed the rank and file 

 of the Saxon armies. 



It is also probable that the smaller sokemen and 

 free tenants, cultivated their lands themselves ; but, 

 judging from the Domesday record, I think we must 

 conclude, that the total extent of land in the hands 

 of small free proprietors, was insignificant, when 

 compared with that which was cultivated by means 

 of serf labour. 



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