THE POST-DOMESDAY EVIDENCE 161 



the villain and the cottager have been degraded into a semi- 

 servile condition. 1 They were unable to leave the manor 

 without paying a fine to their lord, and if they lived elsewhere 

 they must pay "chivage" head-money for permission so 

 to do; they were obliged to redeem their children, to pay 

 fines for permission to give their daughters in marriage, or 

 to educate their sons for the Church ; they paid merchet for 

 the incontinence of their women-folk ; they could not sell ox 

 nor horse without their lord's licence ; they could not sue 

 him in the King's courts ; and they were liable to tallage 

 at his will. To discuss the question how these disabilities 

 became fixed on the class of villans would be out of place 

 here ; it is sufficient to point out their existence in the 

 thirteenth century, and to argue that, as there is no trace 

 of their existence in the pre-Conquest documents, they must 

 have been a consequence of the Norman Conquest in fact, 

 the lawyers of the reign of Henry II. attribute some of them 

 to the changes produced by that conquest. 2 



Alongside the villains and cottagers appears a class of 

 freeholders "liberi tenentes" who usually paid for their 

 land a money rent or a nominal acknowledgment, such as a 

 rose or a pound of pepper. In the law-courts such tenants 

 were said to hold " in socage " a term that was applied to 

 all tenures that were not military, or " in serjeantry," or " in 

 villainage." Bishop Stubbs defines socage as " tenure by fixed 

 and determinate services, usually suit of court ; " 3 but Pro- 

 fessor Maitland has called attention to the dispute between 

 two schools of lawyers in the thirteenth century on the point 

 whether suit of court was a necessary service of the tenant 

 in socage, or whether it should be reserved in the charter 

 creating the holding a dispute which was settled by the 

 Provisions of Westminster in 1259 and the Statute of 



1 It is to avoid this connotation of serfdom that I have omitted the "i" in 

 speaking of the villans of Domesday Book. 



2 Dial. Scac.fi. 10. 3 Select Charters, Glossary. 



M 



