The Origin of the Freeholders. 21 



allodial proprietors, not free tenants.^ "Whatever, therefore, the 

 origin and status of these two classes may have been, they could 

 have had no historical connection with the later freeholders. Even 

 the county of Kent, where villenage in its proper form is said 

 never to have existed, had neither liheri homines nor sochemanni 

 in Domesday Book. 



I will now take up in succession the several features in which 

 the free socagers stood related to the manor and its lord. 



First, their tenure was in its form strictly feudal. They were 

 formally enfeoffed with their lands, by " livery of seisin," were 

 subject to most of the feudal incidents, and were regarded as hav- 

 ing a definite legal interest ; while the serfs or customary tenants 

 held their lands by prescriptive title, and were in strictness of 

 law only tenants at will, not being " regarded as having any legal 

 interest in the land at all." Their estates, as I have shown on 

 another occasion, were exceedingly variable in size and nature; 

 but often they were regular portions of the customary lands, 

 which they held upon the performance of the customary services, 

 or a part of them.f It was not uncommon for one of the cus- 

 tomary tenants to have also a freehold. :{: 



Next to the tenure of land comes the manorial court, in which 

 the jurisdiction of the manor was exercised. This was known as 

 the Court Baron, and its judges were the free tenants of the man-. 

 or, whether by chivalry or by socage. The constitution of the 

 court was strictly feudaL§ Every feudal lord had his feudal 

 court, composed of his immediate vassals, those, that is, who were 

 peers of one another. The feudal court required, for its mainten- 



*" It is characteristic of the growth of tenure that in Domesday (if the in- 

 dex is correct) we hear of difierent classes of tenants, but not of different 

 species of tenure; of Uberi homines, but not of liberum tenementum ; of mili- 

 ies, but not of tenure per militiam; of sochemanni, but not of socagium; of 

 mllani, but not of viUenagiic7n." Digby, p. 40, n. 1. 



f'The tenure of a certain number of these fields is freehold." — Maine, 

 Vill. Comm., p. 137. 



Jin the manor of Ledene, out of nine customary tenants, each holding a 

 virgate of fifty acres, six also had freeholds, varying from one to thirteen 

 acres. — Gloucester Cartulary, iii, 126. 



§ The Uberi homines are almost confined to Norfolk and Suffolk ; the soche- 

 manni to these counties and Nottingham, Northampton, Leicester and Lin- 

 coln. 



