Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England

by Frederic William Maitland

Manorial and non-manorial vills.

Another distinction between the eastern counties and the rest of England is apparent. In many shires we shall find that the name of each vill is mentioned once and no more. This is so because the land of each vill belongs in its entirety to some one tenant in chief. We may go further: we may say, though at present in an untechnical sense, that each vill is a manor. Such is the general rule, though there will be exceptions to it. On the other hand, in the eastern counties this rule will become the exception. For example, of the fourteen vills in the Armingford hundred of Cambridgeshire there is but one of which it is true that the whole of its land is held by a single tenant in chief. In this county it is common to find that three or four Norman lords hold land in the same vill. This seems true not only of Cambridgeshire but also of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, and some parts of Yorkshire. Even in other districts of England the rule that each vill has a single lord is by no means unbroken in the Conqueror’s day and we can see that there were many exceptions to it in the Confessor’s. A careful examination of all England vill by vill would perhaps show that the contrast which we are noting is neither so sharp nor so ancient as at first sight it seems to be: nevertheless it exists.

The distribution of free men and serfs.

A better known contrast there is. The eastern counties are the home of liberty[58]. We may divide the tillers of the soil into five great classes; these in order of dignity and freedom are (1) liberi homines, (2) sochemanni, (3) villani, (4) bordarii, cotarii etc., (5) servi. The two first of these classes are to be found in large numbers only in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. We shall hereafter see that Cambridgeshire also has been full of sokemen, though since the Conquest they have fallen from their high estate. On the other hand, the number of servi increases pretty steadily as we cross the country from east to west. It reaches its maximum in Cornwall and Gloucestershire; it is very low in Norfolk, Suffolk, Derby, Leicester, Middlesex, Sussex; it descends to zero in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. This descent to zero may fairly warn us that the terms with which we are dealing may not bear precisely the same meaning in all parts of England, or that a small class is apt to be reckoned as forming part of a larger class. But still it is clear enough that some of these terms are used with care and express real and important distinctions.

The classification of men.

Of this we are assured by a document which seems to reproduce the wording of the instructions which defined the duty of at least one party of royal commissioners[59]. We are about to speak of the mode in which the occupants of the soil are classified by Domesday Book, and therefore this document deserves our best attention. It runs thus:—The King’s barons inquired by the oath of the sheriff of the shire and of all the barons and of their Frenchmen and of the whole hundred, the priest, reeve and six villani of every vill, how the mansion (mansio) is called, who held it in the time of King Edward, who holds it now, how many hides, how many plough-teams on the demesne, how many plough-teams of the men, how many villani, how many cotarii, how many servi, how many liberi homines, how many sochemanni, how much wood, how much meadow, how much pasture, how many mills, how many fisheries, how much has been taken away therefrom, how much added thereto, and how much there is now, how much each liber homo and sochemannus had and has:—All this thrice over, to wit as regards the time of King Edward, the time when King William gave it, and the present time, and whether more can be had thence than is had now[60].

Basis of classification.

Five classes of men are mentioned and they are mentioned in an order that is extremely curious:—villani, cotarii, servi, liberi homines, sochemanni. It descends three steps, then it leaps from the very bottom of the scale to the very top and thence it descends one step. A parody of it might speak of the rural population of modern England as consisting of large farmers, small farmers, cottagers, great landlords, small landlords. But a little consideration will convince us that beneath this apparent caprice there lies some legal principle. We shall observe that these five species of tenants are grouped into two genera. The king wants to know how much each liber homo, how much each sochemannus holds; he does not want to know how much each villanus, each cotarius, each servus holds. Connecting this with the main object of the whole survey, we shall probably be brought to the guess that between the sokeman and the villein there is some broad distinction which concerns the king as the recipient of geld. May it not be this:—the villein’s lord is answerable for the geld due from the land that the villein holds, the sokeman’s lord is not answerable, at least he is not answerable as principal debtor for the geld due from the land that the sokeman holds? If this be so, the order in which the five classes of men are mentioned will not seem unnatural. It proceeds outwards from the lord and his mansio. First it mentions the persons seated on land for the geld of which he is responsible, and them it arranges in an ‘order of merit.’ Then it turns to persons who, though in some way or another connected with the lord and his mansio, are themselves tax-payers, and concerning them the commissioners are to inquire how much each of them holds. Of course we can not say that this theory is proved by the statement that lies before us; but it is suggested by that statement and may for a while serve us as a working hypothesis. If this theory be sound, then we have here a distinction of the utmost importance. For one mighty purpose, the purpose that is uppermost in King William’s mind, the villanus is not a landowner, his lord is the landowner; on the other hand the sochemannus is a landowner, and is taxed as such. We are not saying that this is a purely fiscal distinction. In legal logic the lord’s liability for the geld that is apportioned on the land occupied by his villeins may be rather an effect than a cause. A lawyer might argue that the lord must pay because the occupier is his villanus, not that the occupier is a villanus because the lord pays. And yet, as we may often see in legal history, there will be action and reaction between cause and effect. The geld is no trifle. Levied at that rate of six shillings on the hide at which King William has just now levied it, it is a momentous force capable of depressing and displacing whole classes of men. In 1086 this tax is so much in everybody’s mind that any distinction as to its incidence will cut deeply into the body of the law.

Our course.

Now this classification of men we will take as the starting point for our enterprise. If we could define the liber homo, sochemannus, villanus, cotarius, servus, we should have solved some of the great legal problems of Domesday Book, for by the way we should have had to define two other difficult terms, namely manerium and soca. It would then remain that we should say something of the higher strata of society, of earls and sheriffs, of barons, knights, thegns and their tenures, of such terms as alodium and feudum, of the general theory of landownership or landholdership. We will begin with the lowest order of men, with the servi, and thence work our way upwards. But our course can not be straightforward. There are so many terms to be explained that sometimes we shall be compelled to leave a question but partially answered while we are endeavouring to find a partial answer for some yet more difficult question.