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.