vill2 [86]
Their status is not a result of commutation -- they are still performing agricultural work, and therefore bond socmen. The Domesday Survey speaks only of villains and 'bordarii,' and it is quite clear that it calls villains the predecessors of the 'bond socmen' of the Hundred Rolls. And now let us examine the portion of the manor which had got into the hands of the Earl Marshall. We find there several free socmen whose holdings are quite irregular in size: they pay rent, and are exempted from agricultural work. Then come five bond socmen, holding thirty acres each, and nine bonds holding fifteen acres each: all these perform the same services as the corresponding people of the King's portion. And lastly come twenty-two tofters. Two facts are especially worth notice: the free socman appears by the side of the bond socman, and the opposition between them reduces itself to a difference between rent-paying people and labourers; the holdings of the rent-payers are broken up into irregular plots, while the labourers still remain bound up by the system of equalised portions. The second significant fact is, that the term 'socman,' which has evidently to be applied to the whole population except the tofters, has dropped out in regard to the half-virgate tenants of the Earl Marshall. If we had only the fragment relating to his nine bondmen, we might conclude perhaps that there was no certain tenure in the manor. The inference would have been false, but a good many inferences as to the social standing of the peasantry are based on no better foundation. In any case the most important part of the population of Soham, as far as it belonged to the king and to the earl, consisted of socmen who at the same time are called bondmen, and were called villains in Domesday. Soham is ancient demesne. Let us now take Crowmarsh in Oxfordshire.(48*) Two-thirds of it belonged to the Earl of Oxford in 1279, and one-third to the Lord de Valence. At the time of the Domesday Survey it was in the hands of Walter Giffard, and therefore not ancient demesne. On the land of the Earl of Oxford we find in 1279 nine servi socomanni holding six virgates, there are a few cotters and a few free tenants besides; the remaining third is occupied by two 'tenentes per servicium socomannorum,' and by a certain number of cotters and free tenants. It can hardly be doubted that the opposition between servi and liberi is not based on the certainty of the tenure; the socmen hold as securely as the free tenants, but they are labourers, while these latter are exempted from the agricultural work of the village. The terms are used in the same way as the 'terra libera' and the 'terra operabilis' of the Glastonbury inquest. I need not say that the socmen of ancient demesne, privileged villains as Bracton calls them, are sometimes subjected to very burdensome services and duties. Merchet is very common among them; it even happens that they have to fine for it at the will of the lord.(49*) But all the incidents of base tenure are to be found also outside the ancient demesne in connexion with the class under discussion. If we take the merchet we shall find that at Magna Tywa, Oxon,(50*) it is customary to give the steward a sword and four pence for licence to give away one's daughter within twenty miles in the neighbourhood; in Haneberg, Oxon,(51*) a spear and four pence are given in payment. The socmen of Peterborough Abbey (52*) have to pay five shillings and four pence under the name of merchet as a fine for incontinence (the legerwite properly so-called), and there is besides a marriage payment (redempcio sanguinis) equal for socmen and villains. The same payment occurs in the land of Spalding Priory, Lincoln.(53*) The same fact strikes us in regard to tallage and aids, i.e. the taxes which the lord had a right to raise from his subjects. In Stoke Basset, Oxon,(54*) the socmen are placed in this respect on the same footing with the villains. The Spalding Cartulary adds that their wainage is safe in any case.(55*) On the lands of this priory the classes of the peasantry are