n8 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



which services are rendered, and is not necessarily under the 

 jurisdiction of a manor ; and a grant of soke would confer 

 on the grantee the right to the services of the men over 

 whom it was granted. But a grant of sake and soke was 

 more comprehensive : the grantee would receive their fines 

 and forfeitures as well as their services. In 1053 Edward 

 the Confessor granted to Ramsey Abbey the soke of Bicham- 

 dike, " and all the rights that any King can have," and at the 

 same time conferred on the abbey the right of sake and soke 

 over all its men. 1 



But this interpretation of the word " soke " is very hetero- 

 dox. Hitherto no distinction has been drawn between the 

 alliterative jingle "sake and soke" and the single term 

 " soke," and a grant of soke has been interpreted to mean, if 

 not a grant of jurisdiction, at all events a grant of the fines 

 and forfeitures arising from the persons over whom it was 

 granted ; and, consequently, sokemen have been defined as 

 persons under the jurisdiction of, or paying their forfeitures to, 

 a manorial court. Consequently the passage in the charter of 

 Henry I. to London (c. 1130), "And the churches and barons 

 and citizens shall hold and have peaceably their sokes with 

 all their customs, so that strangers who are entertained in 

 their sokes shall pay their customs to no one but to him whose 

 soke it is," 2 has been interpreted as confirming to the 

 churches, barons, and citizens their jurisdiction over the in- 

 habitants of their sokes. But the charter speaks of the 

 "customs" (consuetudines) of the sokes, in the same way as 

 Domesday Book speaks of the " customs and works of the 

 soke pertaining to Clifton," and of " the renders of the 

 sokes" of Oswaldslaw, and may therefore be interpreted as 

 being distinctly in favour of the interpretation of the term 

 "soke" suggested in these pages. But the post-Conquest 

 meaning of the term must be discussed later. 



This definition of " soke " and " sokemen," however, does 



1 Ramsey Chart., i. 218, 2 Select Charters, 108, 



