Definition
Sokemanries (singular: sokemanry) are parcels of land held under socage tenure — that is, by simple, fixed services rather than by the military obligations of knight-service or the personal duties of grand or petit serjeanty. The defining characteristic of sokemanry tenure was its relative freedom: these lands were, in the words carried across the historical dictionaries, "enfranchised by the king or his predecessors from their ancient demesne," meaning they had been released from the conditions of ancient demesne into a freer form of customary or common socage. The tenants of sokemanries were called sokemans.
The term belongs to the vocabulary of English feudal land law and describes a category of tenure that occupied a middle ground in the medieval hierarchy — above villeinage (which carried servile obligations) but distinct from the prestige tenures of knight-service and serjeanty. The practical result for sokemans was that their services were certain and fixed, not subject to arbitrary increase, and they enjoyed a greater measure of legal protection than villeins.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of sokemanry; no independent common meaning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not defined as a general English word.
This is pure legal-historical jargon with no common counterpart. The term has no meaning outside the context of English feudal tenure law.
Common Confusion
Sokemanries are closely associated with, but distinct from, socage tenure broadly. All sokemanries were a form of socage, but not all socage was sokemanry. The specific quality of sokemanry was its origin in ancient demesne — lands once held by the Crown — and the particular status of the sokeman within that system. Researchers should also avoid conflating sokemanry with villein socage or customary tenure generally; the enfranchised character of sokemanry distinguished it from holdings that retained servile incidents.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with pre-modern English land law, primarily materials from the medieval period through the seventeenth century. Researchers working in Law Mind's historical corpus should be aware of several navigational points.
First, the term is archaic even within legal literature. By the time Black's Law Dictionary was first compiled, sokemanries had no living significance in American law — the feudal tenures from which sokemanry derived were abolished in England by the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660, and they never took root in American legal practice. Encountering this term in a source suggests either an English law context, a historical treatment of feudal tenure, or a digest referencing older English authorities.
Second, spelling variation is significant in historical sources. Researchers should search for sokemanry, socmanry, sokmanry, and sochemanneries in older texts. The underlying soke (also sok, soc) itself appears in many variant forms.
Third, the Rapalje & Lawrence entry for sokemanries appears to be fragmentary — the entry breaks off mid-sentence and runs into adjacent headwords, suggesting a transcription or printing issue in the source material. Researchers relying on Rapalje & Lawrence for this term should be aware that the definition carried there is incomplete, and the fuller statement is found in Wharton's Law Lexicon as cited by Black's.
Fourth, sokemanries appear in discussions of the Domesday survey and the legal commentary tradition that followed it, particularly in Bracton and the later treatise literature on tenure. If your research touches on ancient demesne, copyhold, or the history of English feudal tenure, sokemanries will appear as a data point in that broader taxonomy.
Historical Dictionary Support
The definitions across Black's (1st Ed.), Black's (2nd Ed.), and Rapalje & Lawrence are substantively identical, all tracing to Wharton. The agreement across sources reflects the fact that sokemanries had a settled, historical meaning with no living doctrinal controversy — there was nothing to dispute by the time these dictionaries were compiled. All three sources emphasize the same two-part characterization: tenure by simple services (the positive definition) and absence of knight-service or serjeanty (the negative definition).
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the practical legal significance of sokeman status — the procedural privileges, the specific courts in which sokemans could sue, or the incidents of the tenure — because by the Victorian era that detail had long since ceased to matter. Researchers seeking substantive treatment of sokemanry should go beyond the dictionary definitions to Coke upon Littleton, Bracton's De Legibus, or Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feudal Tenure; Ancient Demesne; Socage.