Scandinavian-Britain

114 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINYorkshire only 447 sokemen against 5,079 villans and1,819 bordars, but this was after the ravaging ofYorkshire when the free population either perished orwas brought into an inferior position, while Lincolnshireescaped with less damage, and showed the oldstate of society as in King Eadward's days. AtDomesdaytime there were few sokemen left inCambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Herts, and Bucks.,but they were thick in Leicestershire, Notts, andNorthamptonshire. K. Rhamm, quoted by Prof.Vinogradoff (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxi., p. 357), seemsin a recent work to regard sokemen as a Danishalternative for villans, and developed out of leysingsor freedmen. As they existed also in Kent, theymust not be supposed a specially Scandinavianinstitution, but they were more plentiful, not only inDanish as compared with English districts, but inDanish as compared with English manors. InLincolnshire, counting the sokemen, villans andbordars of the Survey,it is found that in the manorswith distinctively English names the sokemennumbered two-fifths of the population, while inmanors with names suggesting Danish origin theyformed three-fifths (Boyle, Hull Literary Club, 1895).We may perhaps say that in the Danelaw theyrepresent the original freeholders of the settlement,who even as odal proprietors owed at least obedienceto the local Thing, from which the transition to theirplace in Anglo-Saxon England was easy. It was inthe districts not forcibly conquered by King Eadwardthe Elder that the free settlers remained and flourished,