THE POST-DOMESDAY EVIDENCE 159 



Here we see that the distinction that we have drawn 

 from Domesday evidence alone between the villan and the 

 sokeman is borne out by evidence which dates from forty 

 years or so of Domesday Book ; and this evidence is entirely 

 in favour of our contention that the Domesday villan repre- 

 sented the pre-Conquest gebur, and the Domesday sokeman 

 was the pre-Conquest geneat : this distinction between the 

 villan rendering week-work and the sokeman rendering boon- 

 work only, runs through all the Liber Niger, except at 

 Scottere and Scalthorpe, where the villans worked two days 

 a week, and the sokemen worked only one. 1 



Except in one passage, the Burton extents do not speak 

 of sokemen ; but a distinction is drawn between the villans, 

 who rendered week-work, and the censarii, who paid a money 

 rent and performed boon-works. For instance, at Stratton 

 (Staffs.) the earlier extent tells us that there were eighteen 

 villans, who each held 2 bovates of land and worked two 

 days a week, and performed other services. Ailward, a 

 censarius, also held 2 bovates, for which he paid $s. a year, 

 and made 2 perches of fencing at the court, and 2 perches 

 of fencing in the wood ; he also lent his plough twice a 

 year to his lord, and reaped for three days in August with 

 his family. 2 In the later extent these censarii are said to 

 hold ad malam. A comparison of the services leads us to 

 identify the Stratton censarii with the Pillesgete sokemen, 

 and this identification is supported by the fact that the 

 services of the sokemen at Winshall, Derbyshire 3 (the only 

 passage where sokemen are mentioned in the Burton extents), 

 are exactly the same as those of the censarii at Stratton. 

 But Domesday Book speaks of no sokemen on the Burton 

 manors except at Winshall ; why, then, do we find censarii 

 in the extents ? In his Villeinage in England, Professor 

 Vinogradoff thinks that the molmen, the tenants who held 



1 Id., p. 164. 2 Collections for Hist, of Staffs., v. I, 25. 



Id., 29. 



