DOMESDAY SURVEY 



1086 or in Anglo-Saxon times. The fact that in our county we have a 

 list of some twenty-one people only who are mentioned as exercising 

 jurisdictional privileges l which might be advanced in this connexion is 

 not altogether to the point ; the franchises specified in the list are of a 

 high order, and rights of simple jurisdiction might be enjoyed by many 

 persons who did not possess the full set of privileges set forth in the list. 

 But in view of what we learn from other counties, for Derbyshire sources 

 throw no light on this matter, it is clear that the power of jurisdiction was 

 no inseparable part of the lord's rights over his sokeland, which included 

 labour services and the payment of customary dues, and a number of vague 

 rights comprised under the Domesday formula of ' commendation.' * In 

 some parts of the country the Domesday sokes have maintained their 

 individual existence up to the present time ; it fortunately happens that 

 we can trace back one Derbyshire soke for over sixty years before the 

 Conquest. In the above-mentioned list of franchises it is stated that 

 Walter de Aincurt exercised soc and sac over Morton. Now in the will 

 of Wulfric ' Spot ' we read of ' Mortune and eal seo socna the thaerto 

 hereth.' 3 In this case ' socna ' has a territorial signification, for the will 

 goes on to recite the places which were included within the ' soke ' of 

 Morton. 4 One of these was Ogston, ' Oggodestun,' which Domesday 

 describes in the same entry as Morton itself. We are so much in the dark 

 as to the growth of private jurisdiction in the Danelaw that this instance 

 of the continuity of jurisdictional rights recorded in Domesday is doubly 

 welcome. We may note here that there is one instance 6 in Derbyshire 

 of the difficult word ' thegnland,' which in Domesday seems to be usually 

 contrasted with ' sokeland.' It is so contrasted in the present case, but 

 we have no further details. Its meaning in Cambridgeshire has been 

 discussed by Mr. Round in the light of the Inquisitio Eliensis, and he has 

 shown it to be applied in that county to land which the owner could not 

 alienate without the consent of his lord. 6 Whether it bears the same 

 meaning in Derbyshire, in the absence of details it is difficult to say, but 

 there seems no reason to doubt that it does. 



Of course the last two of the above manorial types might, and 

 frequently in practice did, overlap ; a manor might well contain both 

 ' sokeland ' and ' berewicks.' Thus Newbold, the first manor entered in 

 the County Survey, contained six ' berewicks ' and also ' sokeland,' which 

 is made the subject of eight distinct entries. 7 But the above classification 

 may help us to realise the variety of the tenurial rights which are repre- 

 sented by the Domesday ' manerium,' 8 and the impossibility of finding 

 an exact definition to cover all these various forms of local organisation. 



1 pp. 328-329. * Don. Bk. and Beyond. 



8 Kemble, Codex Diplomatics, 1280. The phrase is repeated in the charter of Ethelred II. to the 

 monastery, printed in the Man. iii. 3940. 



* ' & J> land piferinn.' 



6 In Hatune, ' Hatton vi bov. terras de soca & i bov. & dim. de Tainland.' This entry is added 

 at the foot of folio 27^0. 



6 feud. Eng. 28-9. 7 See the opening of the Domesday text. 



8 Great stress is laid on this point by Prof. Vinogradoff in Tte Growth of the Manor. 



1 313 40 



