SOKEMAN is a tenant who held his
lands by what is termed soccage-tenure, that is, by performing for the
lord of the Fee under whom he held (and whose protection he could claim)
certain inferior services in husbandry.
There were two kinds of soccage-tenure, one being frank or free
soccage, the other base or villein soccage; that is, the free soccage tenant paid his
rent for his land in money instead of rendering all manner of services yearly
to his chief lord, while the services of base soccages had to be paid in the
drudgery of manual labour. The free
sokemen were the lesser thanes, or freeholders, of Saxon times.
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