chief town, while Ely obtained similar control not only over the two hundreds lying round the monastery, which made up the Isle of Ely, but also over a district of five hundreds in East Suffolk, known as "Wichlawa," having Woodbridge on the Deben as its centre and also comprising Sudbourne with the port of Orford, an estate which Edgar had granted to Aethelwold as a reward for translating the Rule of St Benedict into English. In the "sokes" thus created the essential novelty was not merely the transfer of the king's rights to the monks, but the fact that by the transfer great numbers of men, both small and great, who were in no way the tenants of the monks or under their patronage by "commendation," nevertheless came thus to be subjected to them for police and judicial purposes, and had, if charged with any crime, appear before officials appointed by them, and became liable to pay to the monks fines whenever they were unfortunate enough to be convicted. In other words the creation of the sokes also created a new kind of lordship, so that the freemen of these districts for the future all had, as it were, three lords over them; first their immediate personal lord, to whom they were tied by commendation: secondly the lord of the hundred, to whom they owed "soke"; and thirdly the king or supreme lord, to whom they owed military service, and to whom they could still appeal as a last resort in judicial matters if the lord of the hundred persistently refused to do them adequate justice.
Here we see no small step taken, at the instance of the ecclesiastics, in the direction of feudalism, one too which was certain to be regarded by the lay magnates as a precedent justifying them in seeking similar franchises for themselves. As yet, however, we have no reason to suppose that Edgar had favoured any laymen in this way; and the only other notable franchise which we can ascribe to him is one which was set up in Worcestershire in favour of Oswald, but which differed from those granted to Aethelwold's foundations in extending only to estates which were already in the bishop's ownership, and to men who were under his lordship as tenants of the see of Worcester. Here again we can produce no genuine Latin charter in witness of Edgar's grant; but none the less we may accept as credible the traditions enshrined in the celebrated but suspect landbook known as Altitonantis, and vouched for in the main by the account of Worcestershire given in the Domesday Survey[1]. These authorities, if read together, tell us that Oswald was given a seignorial jurisdiction over about a third of the lands of his see, comprising 300 hides lying scattered in various parts in the valleys of the Severn and the Avon, and that he was further permitted to organise this special area into three new hundreds, which together came to be known as the triple hundred of "Oswaldeslau." The creation of this soke, though in extent of jurisdiction a much narrower one than those given to Peterborough and Ely,
- ↑ Cf. Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 1135; Domesday Book, I. 172 b., and Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 267-269.
