These tenants therefore, though their tenure be abſolutely copyhold, yet have an intereſt equivalent to a freehold: for, though their ſervices were of a baſe and villenous original[1], yet the tenants were eſteemed in all other reſpects to be highly privileged villeins; and eſpecially in this, that their ſervices were fixed and determinate, and that they could not be compelled (like pure villeins) to relinquiſh theſe tenements at the lord's will, or to hold them againſt their own: "et ideo, ſays Bracton, dicuntur liberi." Britton alſo, from ſuch their freedom, calls them abſolutely ſokemans, and their tenure ſokemanries; which he deſcribes[2] to be "lands and tenements, which are not held by knight-ſervice, nor by grand ſerjeanty, nor by petit, but by ſimple ſervices, being as it were lands enfranchiſed by the king or his predeceſſors from their antient demeſne." And the ſame name is alſo given them in Fleta[3]. Hence Fitzherbert obſerves[4], that no lands are antient demeſne, but lands holden in ſocage: that is, not in free and common ſocage, but in this amphibious, ſubordinate claſs, of villein-ſocage. And it is poſſible, that as this ſpecies of ſocage tenure is plainly founded upon predial ſervices, or ſervices of the plough, it may have given cauſe to imagine that all ſocage tenures aroſe from the ſame original; for want of diſtinguiſhing, with Bracton, between free-ſocage or ſocage of frank-tenure, and villein-ſocage or ſocage of antient demeſne.
Lands held by this tenure are therefore a ſpecies of copyhold, and as ſuch preſerved and exempted from the operation of the ſtatute of Charles II. Yet they differ from common copyholds, principally in the privileges before-mentioned: as alſo they differ from freeholders by one eſpecial mark and tincture of villenage, noted by Bracton and remaining to this day; viz. that they cannot be conveyed from man to man by the general common law conveyances of feoffment, and the reſt; but muſt paſs by ſurrender to the lord or his ſteward, in the manner of common
