The example is instructive in many ways. It is a stepping-stone from villainage to socage, or rather to socman's tenure. There can be no question of differences of feoffment. The manorial power is fully recognised, and on the other hand the character of ancient demesne is also conspicuous with its protection of the peasantry. And still the whole fabric is giving way--the holdings get dispersed and the service loses its uniformity. All these traits are a fair warning to those who argue from the irregularity of free tenements and the inequality of their rents against the possibility of their development out of communal ownership. Here is a well-attested village community; its members hold by custom and have not changed their condition either for the better or for the worse in point of title. Later agencies are at work to distort the original arrangement--a few steps more in that direction and it would be impossible to make out even the chief lines of the system. Stanton, in Cambridgeshire, is a similar case[761]. I would especially direct the attention of the reader to the capricious way in which the services are assessed. And still the titles of the tenants are the result not of various grants but of manorial custom applied to the whole community. I repeat, that irregularity in the size of holdings and in the services that they owe is no proof that these holdings have not formed part of a communal arrangement or that their free character (if they have a free character) must be the result of emancipation; these irregularities are found on the ancient demesne where there has been no enfranchisement or emancipation, and where on the other hand the tenants have all along been sufficiently 'free' to enjoy legal protection in their holdings. If we have to say so much with regard to ancient demesne and bond socmen, we must not wonder that free socmen are very often placed in conditions which it would be impossible to reduce to a definite plan. On the fee of Robert le Noreys, in Fordham[762], we find some scattered free tenants burdened with entirely irregular rents, four villains holding eighteen acres each and subjected to heavy ploughing work, three socmen of twenty acres each paying a rent of 4_s._ 2_d._ per holding, and obliged to assist at reaping and to bring chicken, one socman of nine acres paying 10_d._, one of seven acres also assessed at 10_d._, two of eleven acres paying 15_d._, etc.