THEIR CONDITION IN 1066 113 



demesne, and therefore of the pre-Conquest manor in Suffolk, 

 was dependent on the existence of the villans, bordars, and 

 slaves. The dissociation of the sokemen and the freemen 

 from the demesne shows that their presence was not essential 

 to the existence of the manor, and this point is emphasized 

 by the number of manors to which were attached no recorded 

 freemen or sokemen, and by the scores of unattached free- 

 men that are recorded. Their being thus extra-manorial 

 was the reason why the Cambridgeshire jurors were asked 

 to state the area of their holdings. 



The differentiation between the sokemen and the free- 

 men laid down in the fourth of our deductions, is a general 

 but not invariable rule. On the estates of the Abbey of 

 St. Edmund, in the hundreds of Thinghoe, Lackford, and 

 Babenberg, in Suffolk, there were 128 freemen ; and of these 

 126 could sell, and only two were restrained from selling 

 their land. On the same estates there were 63 sokemen, of 

 whom 58 could not sell, and only five were at liberty to sell 

 their lands. At Copford l and Sutton 2 a similar distinction 

 is drawn between the sokemen who could not recede, and 

 the freemen who could go where they wished ; or, in other 

 words, could commend themselves to a lord of their own 

 choice. (Mr. Round has shown that this phrase is equiva- 

 lent to stating that they could sell.) In Essex the state- 

 ment as to liberty of commendation is rare, but there were 

 47 freemen with liberty of commendation, of whom it is 

 stated that they could go where they would, and only two 

 who could not recede ; there were in that county 107 soke- 

 men who could not recede, and only five who could recede. 

 And Mr. Round has noticed the same distinction on some 

 of the Norfolk properties of the Church of Ely. 3 Hence we 

 see a clearly drawn line between those men who were at 

 liberty to sell their land or to commend themselves to what 

 lord they would, and those who were restrained from doing 



1 D. B., II. 60 b. 2 Id., 96 b. 3 F. ., 34. 



I 



