54 



THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



These two post- Conquest estates were composed, the one 

 of ten, the other of eight pre-Conquest manors ; and instances 

 of the consolidation of two or three pre-Conquest manors into 

 one post-Conquest tenement are very common. But the 

 Domesdays for these counties give no information of the con- 

 stitution of the pre-Conquest manors, sokelands, or berewicks. 

 Such information is found only in the volume relating to the 

 eastern counties, in which, however, the term " sokeland " is 

 rarely or never used. 



In Essex and Suffolk certain tenements are stated to have 

 been manors before the Conquest. But there are many tene- 

 ments to which no designation whatever is applied. Let us 

 schedule the pre-Conquest condition of the estates of the 

 Abbey of St. Edmund's, in the hundred of Thingoe (Suffolk). 

 To those which are styled manors, the marginal "M" is 

 prefixed. 1 



(In this schedule the villans, bordars, and slaves of the free- 

 men, and the sokemen and the teams of the freemen and the 

 sokemen in the manors, are omitted.) 

 1 D. B., II. 362-364. 



