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The term ''soke'' (; in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
: ', connected ultimately with ', "to seek"), at the time of the
Norman conquest of England
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, Duchy of Brittany, Breton, County of Flanders, Flemish, and Kingdom of France, French troops, ...
, generally denoted "jurisdiction", but its vague usage makes it probably lack a single, precise definition.
[ ]
Anglo-Saxon origins
The phrase 'Sac and soc' was used in early English for the right to hold a court
[G. M. Trevelyan, ''History of England'' (London 1926) p. 92] (the primary meaning of 'soc' seems to have involved ''seeking''; thus ''soka faldae'' was the duty of seeking the
lord
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or ar ...
's court, just as ' was the duty of seeking the lord's mill).
[
According to many scholars, such as ]Stenton
Stenton ( sco, Staneton) is a parish and village in East Lothian, Scotland. It is bounded on the north by parts of the parishes of Prestonkirk and Dunbar, on the east by Spott and on the west by Whittingehame. The name is said to be of Saxon ...
and Finberg, "... the Danelaw
The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...
was an especially ‘free’ area of Britain because the rank and file of the Danish armies, from whom sokemen were descended, had settled in the area and imported their own social system."
Royal grants of sac and soc are seen by historians like Vinogradoff as opening the way for the replacement of national by local justice, through the creation of immunities or franchises: as G. M. Trevelyan put it, “by grants of ''sac and soc'' private justice was encroaching on public justice”. Other scholars have viewed the judicial powers represented by the Anglo-Saxon Soke as rather limited. The standard grant of ''sac et soc, toll et team et infangthief'' represented the equivalent of the authority of the reeve at the hundred
100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101.
In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to de ...
court, impinging on royal justice, for instance, in the right to slay a thief caught red-handed (infangentheof).
Sokemen
A sokeman belonged to a class of tenants
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a l ...
, found chiefly in the eastern counties, especially the Danelaw
The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...
, occupying an intermediate position between the free tenant
Free tenants, also known as free peasants, were tenant farmer peasants in medieval England who occupied a unique place in the medieval hierarchy. They were characterized by the low rents which they paid to their manorial lord. They were subj ...
s and the bond tenants, in that they owned and paid taxes on their land themselves.[G. O. Sayles, ''The Medieval Foundations of England'' (London 1966) p. 136] Forming between 30% and 50% of the countryside, they could buy and sell their land, but owed service to their lord's ''soke'', court, or jurisdiction (though Adolphus Ballard
Adolphus Ballard (22 February 1867 – 1915) was an English historian and solicitor. The eldest son of Adolphus Ballard and Frances Ann née Stafford he was born in Chichester, Sussex, educated in Hastings, Sussex and articled as a solicitor in ...
argued that a sokeman was merely a man who rendered service from a sokeland, and was not necessarily under jurisdiction).
Sokemen remained an important rural element after the Conquest, buying and selling property, and providing their overlords with money rents and court attendance, rather than manorial labour. According to the Ely Inquiry
The Ely Inquiry or ''Inquisitio Eliensis'' 'IE''was a satellite of the 1086 Domesday survey. Its importance is both that it gives a more detailed account of the local area than Domesday Book itself, and that its prologue offers an account of th ...
, the terms of remit for the Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
specified determining for each manor “how many freemen; how many sokemen...and how much each freeman and sokeman had and has”.
Later developments
After the Norman Conquest, doubt developed over the precise meaning of the word soke. In some versions of the much-used tract ', "soke" is defined: ' (Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
for ‘to have a free court’), and in others as ', which glosses
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.
A collection of glosses is a ''g ...
somewhat ambiguously as ''claim '':[ thus sometimes ''soke'' denoted the right to hold a court, especially when associated with ''sak'' or ''sake'' in the alliterative ]binomial expression
In linguistics and stylistics, an irreversible binomial, frozen binomial, binomial freeze, binomial expression, binomial pair, or nonreversible word pair is a pair or group of words used together in fixed order as an idiomatic expression or co ...
' (').
Sometimes only the right to receive the fines Fines may refer to:
* Fines, Andalusia, Spanish municipality
* Fine (penalty)
* Fine, a dated term for a premium on a lease of land, a large sum the tenant pays to commute (lessen) the rent throughout the term
*Fines, ore or other products with a s ...
and forfeitures of the men over whom it was granted when they had been condemned in a court of competent jurisdiction. The ''Leges Leges (plural of Latin lex: ''law'') may refer to:
Literature
* ''Laws'' (dialogue) Plato's last and longest dialogue
Ancient Roman law
* Leges regiae, early Roman laws introduced by the Kings of Rome
* Lex Julia (Leges Juliae), ancient Roman la ...
'' also speaks of pleas ' (‘pleas which are in his investigation’).
Ballard in the early twentieth century argued that the interpretation of the word "soke" as ''jurisdiction'' should be accepted only where it stands for the fuller phrase, "sake and soke", and that "soke" standing by itself denoted services. Certainly, many passages in the Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
support this contention, but in other passages "soke" seems to serve merely as a short expression for "sake and soke".
Territorial
The term ''soke'', unlike ''sake'', sometimes applied to the district over which the right of jurisdiction extended (compare Soke of Peterborough
The Soke of Peterborough is a historic area of England associated with the City and Diocese of Peterborough, but considered part of Northamptonshire. The Soke was also described as the Liberty of Peterborough, or Nassaburgh hundred, and compr ...
). By the same usage, it could designate the ward of a town, as with Aldgate
Aldgate () was a gate in the former defensive wall around the City of London. It gives its name to Aldgate High Street, the first stretch of the A11 road, which included the site of the former gate.
The area of Aldgate, the most common use of ...
in the charters of Henry I.
Legal terminology
The law term, socage
Socage () was one of the feudal duties and land tenure forms in the Feudalism, English feudal system. It eventually evolved into the freehold tenure called "free and common socage", which did not involve feudal duties. Farmers held land in excha ...
, used of this tenure, arose by adding the French suffix ' to '.
See also
* History of English land law
The history of English land law can be traced back to Roman times. Throughout the Early Middle Ages, where England came under rule of post-Roman chieftains and Saxon monarchs, land was the dominant source of personal wealth. English land law ...
* Soke used in place-names:
** Portsoken
Portsoken, traditionally referred to with the definite article as the Portsoken, is one of the City of London's 25 ancient wards, which are still used for local elections. Historically an extra-mural Ward, lying east of Aldgate and the City wal ...
, a district in the City of London
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...
** Soke of Peterborough
The Soke of Peterborough is a historic area of England associated with the City and Diocese of Peterborough, but considered part of Northamptonshire. The Soke was also described as the Liberty of Peterborough, or Nassaburgh hundred, and compr ...
, Cambridgeshire
** Thorpe-le-Soken
Thorpe-le-Soken is a village and civil parish in the Tendring district of Essex, England located east of Colchester, west of Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea and north of Clacton-on-Sea.
History
Since 2002, archaeological investigations ahead ...
, Essex
** Kirby-le-Soken
Kirby-le-Soken is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Frinton and Walton, in the Tendring district of North East Essex, England, which is mainly agricultural, but increasingly residential, near Frinton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the ...
, Essex
** Walton-le-Soken, Essex
** Liberty of the Soke, Winchester
Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...
* Socken
Socken is the name used for a part of a county in Sweden. In Denmark similar areas are known as ''sogn'', in Norway ''sokn'' or ''sogn'' and in Finland ''pitäjä'' ''(socken)''. A socken is a country-side area that was formed around a church, ...
References
External links
The Story of Our Law for Little Children
(A simple history of the word Socage)
*{{Cite EB1911 , last=Vinogradoff , first=Paul , authorlink=Paul Vinogradoff , wstitle=Socage , short=x
English legal terminology
Feudal duties
Former subdivisions of England
Land tenure
Legal history of England
Medieval English law