DOMESDAY SURVEY 



authority is Professor Vinagradoff, who is indisposed to see any very deep 

 line of cleavage marking off the sokemen from the ubiquitous class of 

 ' villani.' He says : 



Beginning with ' sokemen ' we may notice that besides Domesday it occurs in 

 Latin versions of old English law, for instance in the laws of Edward the Confessor, 

 where a distinct fine is mentioned as appertaining to the villein and the sokeman, the 

 fine of 1 2 shillings for the breach of their home peace. These instances show to my 

 mind that the distinction between villein and sokeman is a later Norman one, and 

 that originally both groups belonged to the same class of ' twyhyndmen ' or ' ceorls.' 

 Why should otherwise the fine be identical ? It is applied to two subdivisions which 

 appear differentiated only in Norman documents. There was no call for a differen- 

 tiation of fines in the time of Edward the Confessor because both the ancestors of 

 later villeins and those of later sokemen were as yet merged in the one class of 

 twyhynd ceorls. 1 



This is not the place to discuss this subtle argument, which must 

 largely depend for its validity upon the weight to be attached to the 

 ' laws ' of Edward the Confessor, an authority of by no means the best 

 reputation. 9 Turning to the sokemen as they are found in Derbyshire 

 we have seen that they are by no means a large class, numbering only 

 128, or between 4 and 5 per cent, of the recorded population. It may 

 sound a truism to remark that in Derbyshire sokemen are mostly found 

 settled on sokeland, but in view of the inconsistencies of Domesday the 

 note is worth making. Twenty-nine sokemen appear on the king's land, 

 none of whom, we may remark, are found in the great group of royal 

 manors on the Dove and Upper Derwent, twenty- two occur on the small 

 fief of the bishop of Chester, and twenty-seven on the estates of Ralf fitz 

 Hubert. The most considerable groups of sokemen are found at Winger- 

 worth (14), Long Eaton (22), Chaddesden (n), Mosbrough (13), 

 Barlborough with Whitwell (10), and Ilkeston (10). It thus appears 

 that eighty sokemen, or nearly two-thirds of the total number recorded 

 for the county, are found concentrated in six places, the first four of 

 which are duly denoted by the marginal letter S as sokeland. With the 

 exception of four sokemen divided between Trusley, Barrow-on-Trent, 

 and Boulton not a single sokeman appears west of the Derwent and north 

 of the Trent. This may be accounted for partly by the non-appearance 

 of sokemen on the royal demesne in this quarter, and partly by the very 

 small size of the pre-Conquest manors in Appletree wapentake, for we 

 have seen that the class is most frequently represented on large manors 

 with appurtenant sokeland, the fourth manorial type described above. 

 In any case it is suggestive to find so large a proportion of the class 

 occurring on the borders of Notts and Leicestershire, in both of which 

 the sokemen were much more prevalent than was the case in our county. 

 The Derbyshire portion of Domesday contains little or nothing to help 

 us in determining the relationship of these sokemen to their lord. We 

 read once of a payment which they made to him; 3 but the most inter- 

 esting statement relating to the class occurs in the entry concerning 

 Winshill, a manor belonging to Burton Abbey, in which we are told that 



1 The Growth of the Manor, 341-2. See Pollock and Maitland, Hisi. of Engl. Law, i. 103-4. 



8 At Trusley, see below p. 340. 



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