from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Feudal tenure of land by a tenant in return for agricultural or other nonmilitary services or for payment of rent in money.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. In the Middle Ages, a system whereby a tenant would pay a rent or do some agricultural work for the landlord.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A tenure of lands and tenements by a certain or determinate service; a tenure distinct from chivalry or knight's service, in which the obligations were uncertain. The service must be certain, in order to be denominated socage, as to hold by fealty and twenty shillings rent.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In law, a tenure of lands in England by the performance of certain determinate service: distinguished both from knight-service, in which the render was uncertain, and from villeinage, where the service was of the meanest kind: the only freehold tenure in England after the abolition of military tenures.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. land tenure by agricultural service or payment of rent; not burdened with military service
A minor might, however, inherit land held by what was known as socage tenure, which according to Sir William Blackstone
But this does not hold good where the King is the lord of the common pasture, and several persons holding of him in socage have common, because in that case anyone having common may avow a good distress.
It is curious that while in England the burgage-tenure was deemed a species of socage, to distinguish it from the military holdings, in Scotland it was strictly a military holding, by the service of watching and warding for the defence of the burgh.
The proprietors held their land in free and common socage, and the planters in the Northern Neck paid quitrents and fees to the proprietors rather than to the crown.
The fixed rent replaced the service, military or personal, required under feudal law; and the socage tenure in effect did not subject the land to the rules of escheat or return of the land to the
His right to the land, in fact, was not freehold, but tenure by villein socage.
He had just got to the bit about Raptu Haeredis, which -- as of course you know, is a writ for taking away an heir holding in socage.
They were given in freehold, in free and common socage.
The Puritan who went to Massachusetts Bay took his system of socage tenure along with him.
Prince Cuza introduced a series of reforms; the most important were the secularization of the Greek monasteries, the law dealing with public instruction, the codification of the laws on the basis of the Napoleonic Code, and especially the land laws of 1864, by which the peasants were given free possession of the land and the remnants of serfdom, socage and tithes, were abolished.