CHAPTER VII 

 THE HUMBLER FOLK 



" Quot villani ? quot cotarii ? quot servi ? 

 Quot liberi homines ? quot sochemanni ? 

 Quantum ibi quisqne liber homo vel sochemannus habuit vel 

 habet?" 



OF all the questions which were propounded to the Cam- 

 bridgeshire jurors there are probably none which are 

 the subject of greater discussion at the present day 

 than those which are given in the heading to this chapter. 

 The distinctions between these five classes of humbler folk, 

 though certainly well known to the jurors, have hitherto 

 eluded research, and the last word on the subject has yet to 

 be written. These five classes may roughly be classed 

 together as the cultivating occupiers ; not that some of those 

 whom we have previously been considering were not actually 

 engaged in the manual labours of cultivation. In all pro- 

 bability, many of those who were classed as the King's 

 vavassours, the King's thegns, and the King's Serjeants, were 

 the actual cultivators of the land they occupied, or, at all 

 events, superintended its cultivation. But in this chapter 

 we have to consider the position of those who were engaged 

 in agriculture, and nothing but agriculture. It would, how- 

 ever, be misleading to call them " the labouring classes." 

 The landless farm labourer of the present day is the product 

 of later ages, and is an anomaly in Domesday Book. 



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