A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



A table of twenty entries taken at random gives the following results for 

 about sixty-five recorded plough-lands. 



It will be noticed that the serfs are few, only about i in 27 of the recorded 

 population according to Ellis's figures/ and that they seem to be decreasing 

 more rapidly than the other two classes. The proportion is i: 22J in Suffolk, 

 while in Essex, the only other county where the figures are fairly comparable, 

 it is I : 9. Comparing the counties in Greater Domesday we find i : 9 in 

 Hertfordshire as against 7ione in Lincoln and Huntingdon and i in 3 and 

 I in 4 in Berkshire and Gloucestershire. We may safely conclude that East 

 Anglia was on the whole a free country. The figures quoted above, which 

 have not been selected for the purpose, afford a fair number of instances of 

 the proportion of two serfs per demesne-team which Mr. Round has pointed 

 out in the case of Essex ; * but it will be noticed that some manors had no serfs, 

 and some no villeins. 



Leaving the demesne lands of the tenants-in-chief we have to consider 

 the numerous under-tenants. The distracting wealth of detail of Little 

 Domesday is nowhere more apparent than in the descriptions of these de- 

 pendent holders. Highest in the scale come the Norman under-tenants such 

 as Geoffrey Bainard, William de Noyers, or Roger Longsword. We are not 

 told how they held of their lords, but we are probably not anticipating the 

 course of events if we suppose them to have been for the most part the 

 ' knights ' of the tenants-in-chief, holding of them by some kind of military 

 service and by suit to their lord's court. Some of the tenants-in-chief were 

 themselves under-tenants of other lords. Such a holder would have a manor 

 or manors and was emphatically liber homo. But we find other tenants of 

 various degrees of freedom, some described as Uberi homines, some as sochemanni 

 holding tenements of all sorts of sizes down to a few acres. How and to 

 what extent were they dependents on their lords ? 



We shall probably be wise not to attach much importance to the 

 apparent distinction of freemen and sokemen. Thus the four freemen whom 

 Domesday attributes to the manor of Methwold^ are described by the Inqui- 

 sitio Eliensis as sokemen.' Again, of six freemen at Deopham, who had been 

 added since the Conquest to Ralf de Beaufeu's manor of Deopham,' three were 



' W. de W.irenne. ' Roger Bigod. ' Hermer de Ferrieres. 



* Ralf de Bella Fago. 



' Int. to Donifsday, ii, 470. ° V. C. H. Essex, i, 361, sq. 



' Dom. Bk. f. 1 3615. ' Inj. Com. Cantab, p. 137. ' Dom. Bk. f. 227. 



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