122 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



that the two classes were often confused, and that men would 

 be called " sokemen " in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, 

 who would be called " liberi homines " in Essex or Suffolk, or 

 vice versd in Sussex. The nature of their services would 

 distinguish them from the villans, but a further question must 

 be asked to distinguish the two classes from one another. 

 Could the man in question commend himself or no ? If he 

 could, he was a freeholder, a " liber homo ; " if not, he was a 

 "sokeman." For this reason the occasional passages in the 

 Essex and Suffolk Domesdays, which mention freemen who 

 could not sell, or sokemen who could recede, must be regarded 

 as lapsus calami, which a careful revision would have 

 corrected. 



Before passing from the services rendered to the King by 

 his freeholders, it will be well to turn to the statistics relating 

 to the country between the Mersey and the Ribble. 1 Those 

 who held of the King were called " thegns " in the hundreds of 

 West Derby and Salford, "drengs " in Newton and Wellington, 

 and " freemen " in Blackburn and Leyland. But, fortunately, 

 the " drengs " of Newton are also called freemen ; so that there 

 would appear to be no essential difference between the King's 

 tenants in the four hundreds of Newton, Wallington, Blackburn, 

 and Leyland, and that they may be equated with the free- 

 holders of other counties. The customs of the thegns of West 

 Derby are set out at length. All of them paid 2 ounces of 

 pennies (i.e. 2s. 8d.) for every carucate of land they held, and 

 were accustomed to make the King's houses and their perti- 

 nences in the same way as the villans, and also fisheries and 

 enclosures in the woods and deerhays. The defaulter for- 

 feited 2s. Each of them sent his harvesters one day in 

 August to cut the King's crops. The drengs of Newton 

 had the same customs as the men of Derby, and in addition 

 mowed for two days in August in the King's cultivated lands ; 

 and the freemen of Blackburn were subject to the same 

 1 D. B., I. 269 b. 



