20 Wssconsin Academy of Scieiines, Arts, and Letters. 



less legally one class. The lists of free tenants, lihere teneyifes, al- 

 ways begin, as is natural, with the most honorable class, the ten- 

 ants by knights' service, and then continue without a break with 

 the tenants by socage. And all the freeholders, omnes lihere ten- 

 ejites, compjsed the court baron of the manor, and owed suit to 

 the court of the hundred aYid the shire. Now, as the two catego- 

 ries of freeholders composed but one class in law, it is natural to 

 suppose that they had the same origin. The tenants by chivalry 

 were of course a purely feudal class, holding their estates by the 

 strictly feudal tenure of military service. The tenants by socage, 

 it is natural to suppose, may have had a similar origin. 



As a matter of fact, the two classes came into existence at the 

 same time. Tenure by chivalry was, as a matter of course, intro- 

 duced when the feudal system was introduced. The precise time 

 and manner of this is still a matter of uncertainty. What is cer- 

 tain is that feudalism, in its complete form, did not exist in Eng- 

 land at the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), but that it is 

 found completely developed at the accession of the House of 

 Anjou (Henry II.), in 1154. Now this interval of about a hun- 

 dred years is precisely the time in which the tenure by free socage 

 and the class of tenants by socage made their appearance. 



Even as late as Domesday Book (1086) there was no freehold 

 (except by military tenure), and no class of rural freeholders. 

 But the Boldon Book (1183), and the Abingdon Cartulary, of 

 about the same time, contain lists of freeholders of both the mili- 

 tary and the agricultural class, and standing above the mass of 

 servile tenants. It is therefore a priori probable that the tenure 

 by free socage and the class of free socagers came into existence in 

 connection with the establishment of feudalism, and as a part of 

 this process. It is true, as I pointed out in a former paper,^' that 

 there is a large class of sochemanni enumerated in Domesday Book ; 

 but, first, this class is confined to a few counties in the east of 

 England; and, secondly, it appears to have been a class of per- 

 sons, not a category of tenure ; — there were sochemanni, but no 

 socagium. There was likewise found in the eastern counties a 

 class of freemen, lileri homines ; but they appear to have been 

 *Transactions, Vol. I, p. 167. 



