THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



corner of the county alone. To the south of it, in our county's extreme 

 east, we have 15 at Hadham with Wickham, 6 at Standon, and 5 at 

 Sawbridgeworth. Following down the Essex border, we have 1 5 at 

 Stanstead, i at Hoddesdon, and i at Broxbourne. These raise the above 

 total to 109 ; and if we add the 10 at Bengeo, i at Ware, and 8 at 

 Sacomb, we may roughly say that two-thirds of the sokemen, outside 

 Hitchin, are found to the east of a line drawn from Royston to Hertford 

 and thence to Broxbourne. And of the remainder, the majority are 

 found in the extreme north of the county. At Hinxworth there were 

 9, at Bygrave 2, at Clothall 5, at Wellington 3, at Latch worth 3, and at 

 Pirton 2, while those at Offley, Wellbury, Dinsley and Wymondley are 

 mentioned under Hitchin. Passing eastwards again, we have i at 

 Graveley, 3 at Luffhells, and 2 at Throcking, which brings us back to 

 Layston and to Barksden Green. 



It is interesting to observe that, as we might expect, the soke- 

 men of Hertfordshire are mainly found in the districts adjacent to the 

 counties where they were very numerous. For this is a further proof 

 that the tenure was distinctive of a region, and, as Professor Maitland 

 has observed, 'the faults (if any faults there be) in a truly economic 

 stratification of mankind are not likely to occur just at the boundaries 

 of the shires.' 1 



But who, it may be asked, were the ' sokemen ' who had thus over- 

 flowed into the county ? Although their name is derived from soke 

 ('soche'), that is from the right of jurisdiction (or the profits of juris- 

 diction) that some one possessed over them, their exact character is 

 obscure. 8 It should however be explained, for the comprehension of 

 the Survey, that a sokeman might be the 'man ' of one lord,. though his 

 c soke ' belonged to another. Moreover, Domesday persistently draws a 

 distinction between two kinds of tenure, although the terms in which it 

 expresses that distinction vary a good deal. Of one class of holders we 

 read that they were free to sell (or to assign) their land, or to ' withdraw 

 with their land ' without leave (licentia) ; of another, that they could 

 not do this without the leave of their lord. I have argued from the 

 Cambridgeshire evidence that the land held by the latter was what was 

 known as * thegnland,' while the other class held ' socland.' 8 Another 

 point of importance revealed by the Hertfordshire Survey is that the 

 sokemen had in some cases been already 'in a manor' before the coming 

 of the Normans, while in others they had been annexed since then to a 

 manor to which they had not belonged. For instance, 3 sokemen (of the 

 king), who were the ' men ' of archbishop Stigand, were after his death 

 annexed with their land to bishop Odo's manor at Clothall, although 

 'they were not there T.R.E.' (fo. 134). At Tring, according to the 

 witness of the men of the Hundred, Engelric, of whom we shall hear 

 again, had not only annexed to his manor 2 sokemen, with their 2 



1 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 1 40. 



3 For a full discussion of the sochemanni, see Professor Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond. 

 3 See for all this my Feudal England, pp. 22-6, 2835. 



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