Читать книгу The Industrial History of England - Henry de Beltgens Gibbins - Страница 15

—So far I have been speaking only about tenants in villeinage. But in the Domesday Book we find another class of tenants, called free, who had to pay a rent fixed in amount, either in money or kind, and sometimes in labour. This rent was fixed and unalterable in amount, and they were masters of their own actions as soon as it was paid. They were not, like the villeins, bound to the soil, but could transfer their holdings or even quit the manor if they liked. They were, however, subject to their lord’s jurisdiction in matters of law, and hence were called soke-men (from soke or soc = jurisdiction exercised by a lord). They also were bound to give military service when called upon, which the villeinage tenants had not to give. If they had any services to render, these were generally commuted into money payments; and here we may observe, that there was a constant tendency from the Conquest to the time of the Great Plague (1348) towards this commutation. Villeins also could, and did frequently, commute their labour rents for money rents. {16}

In Domesday, we find that the Eastern and East-central counties were those in which “free” tenants or soke-men were most prevalent. There they form from 27 to 45 per cent. of the inhabitants of those parts, though, taking all England into view, they only form 4 per cent. of the total population. The number of free tenants, however, was constantly increasing, even among tenants in villeinage, for the lord often found it more useful to have money, and was willing to allow commutation of services; or again, he might prefer not to cultivate all his own land (his demesne), but to let it for a fixed money rent to a villein to do what he could with it; and thus the villein became a free man, while the lord was sure of a fixed sum from his land every year, whether the harvest were good or bad.