THEIR CONDITION IN 1066 133 



1. The " freeholders," with liberty of sale and commenda- 

 tion, rendering occasional services to the King. 



2. The " sokemen," restrained from sale and commenda- 

 tion, tenants of, and rendering occasional services to a subject. 



3. The"villans" ^ ( all of whom were so intimately 



4. The " cottagers " connected with the demesne that 



5. The " slaves" J I it could not exist without them. 

 In addition, it must be remembered that in several places 



the villans sowed a portion of their lord's land with their 

 own seed, and that there is one passage stating that certain 

 cottagers worked one day a week. 



If the characteristics of these five classes be compared 

 with the characteristics of the five classes whose existence 

 was deduced from the pre-Domesday documents, we find 



1. That the services of the freeholders agree with those 

 of the King's gafolgelders. 



2. That the services of the sokemen agree with those of 

 the geneat. 



3. That the only specified service of the villans agrees 

 with one of the specified services of the geburs. 



4. That the services of the cottager in the Rectitudines 

 Singularum Personarum agree with the services of the Domes- 

 day cottager. 



In three out of four cases the resemblance is complete, and 

 we may therefore identify the " freeholder " (liber homo) with 

 the King's gafolgelder, and the " sokeman " with the geneat. 

 The cottager's services are the same in both documents, and 

 we are therefore compelled by the process of exhaustion to 

 identify the " villan " with the gebur, and to argue that although 

 Domesday is silent on this point, he worked two or three 

 days a week on his lord's demesne. But a warning must 

 here be given. This identification of the freeholders and 

 sokemen holds good only in the eastern counties, where the 

 Commissioners drew a distinction between the freeholder 

 and the sokeman. We have already noticed that in other 



