Two cases from the Hundred Rolls may serve as an illustration of this not unimportant point. The vill of Soham in Cambridgeshire[415] was owned in 1279 partly by the King, partly by the Earl Marshall, and partly by the Bishop of Ely. There are two socmen holding from the King thirty acres each, fourteen socmen holding fifteen acres each, and twenty-six 'toftarii' possessed of small plots. No villains are mentioned, but the socmen are designated on the margin in a more definite way as bond socmen. The manor had been in the possession of the Crown at the time of the Conquest, and it is to be noticed, to begin with, that the chief population of the part which remained with the King appears as socmen--a good illustration of the principle that the special status did not originate when the manor was granted out by the Crown. The sixteen peasants first mentioned are holders of virgates and half-virgates, and form as it were the original stock of the tenantry--it would be impossible to regard them as a later adjunct to the village. Their status is not a result of commutation--they are still performing agricultural work, and therefore _bond_ socmen. The Domesday Survey speaks only of villains and 'bordarii,' and it is quite clear that it calls villains the predecessors of the 'bond socmen' of the Hundred Rolls. And now let us examine the portion of the manor which had got into the hands of the Earl Marshall. We find there several _free socmen_ whose holdings are quite irregular in size: they pay rent, and are exempted from agricultural work. Then come five _bond socmen_, holding thirty acres each, and nine _bonds_ holding fifteen acres each: all these perform the same services as the corresponding people of the King's portion. And lastly come twenty-two tofters. Two facts are especially worth notice: the free socman appears by the side of the bond socman, and the opposition between them reduces itself to a difference between rentpaying people and labourers; the holdings of the rentpayers are broken up into irregular plots, while the labourers still remain bound up by the system of equalised portions. The second significant fact is, that the term 'socman,' which has evidently to be applied to the whole population except the tofters, has dropped out in regard to the half-virgate tenants of the Earl Marshall. If we had only the fragment relating to his nine bondmen, we might conclude perhaps that there was no certain tenure in the manor. The inference would have been false, but a good many inferences as to the social standing of the peasantry are based on no better foundation. In any case the most important part of the population of Soham, as far as it belonged to the king and to the earl, consisted of socmen who at the same time are called bondmen, and were called villains in Domesday.