in its most general and extensive signification, seems to denote a tenure by any certain and determinate service. And in this sense it is by our ancient writers constantly put in opposition to chivalry or knight-service, where the tenure was precarious and uncertain. The service must therefore be certain, in order to denominate it socage; as to hold by fealty and twenty shillings rent; or, by homage, fealty, and twenty shillings rent; or, by homage and fealty without rent; or, by fealty and certain corporal service, as ploughing the lord's land for three days; or, by fealty only without any other service; for all these are tenures in socage.

Socage is of two sorts: free-socage, where the services are not only certain but honourable; and villein-socage, where the services, though certain, are of a baser nature. Such as hold by the former tenure are called, in Glanville and other subsequent authors, by the name of liberi solemanni, or tenants in free-socage. The word is derived from the Saxon appellation soc, which signifies liberty or privilege, and, being joined to an usual termination, it forms socage, in Latin socagium, signifying a free or privileged tenure.

It seems probable that the socage-tenures were the relics of Saxon liberty; retained by such persons as had neither forfeited them to the king, nor been obliged to exchange their tenure for the more honourable, as it was called, but at the same time more burdensome, tenure of knight-service. This is peculiarly remarkable in the tenure which prevails in Kent, called gavelkind, which is generally acknowledged to be a species of socage-tenure; and its preservation from the innovations of the Norman conqueror is a fact universally known. And those who thus preserved their liberties were said to hold in free and common socage.