SOCAGE, or SOCCAGE, is service rendered by a tenant to his lord for lands, the principal ingredient of which is its being fixed and determined in its nature and quality. The certainty of the service distinguished socage from tenure in chivalry, or by knight's service, on the one hand, and from tenure in pure villeinage by arbitrary service, on the other ; and therefore Littleton says, § 118, "A man may hold of his lord by fealty only ; and such tenure is a tenure in socage ; for every tenure which is not a tenure in chivalry is a tenure in socage." Swage is said by old writers to be of three kinds : socage in frank tenure ; socage in ancient tenure ; and socage in base tenure. The propriety of the last denomination is however doubtful The second and third kinds are now called respectively tenure in ancient dem esne and copyhold tenure. The first kind, is called free, and common socage, to distinguish it from the two others, though as the term socage has long ceased to be applied to the two latter, socage and free and common socage now mean one and the same thing.
Besides fealty, which the tenant in socage, like every other tenant, is bound to do when required, the tenant in socage, or, as ha was formerly called, the socnger or sockman, is bound to give his attendance at his lord's court-baron, if the lord holds a court-beren either for a manor [3la:soa] or for a seigniory in gross. This obligation to attend the court, it is supposed, gave rise to the name of the tenure, but the question is not without doubt.
Both forfeiture and escheat are incident to tenure in socago, as they were also to tenure by knight's service. In that species of socago tenure which is milled gavelkind there is no forfeiture.
Wardahlp is also incident to this tenure. But this incident is not, as formerly iu knight's service, a benefit given to the lord, but a burden imposed on the infant's next friend of full age, who must however be a person not capable of inheriting the estate upon his young kinsman's death.
In particular districts some of the incidents of tenure by knight's service were by custom annexed to the tenure in socage. Thus in the diocese of Winchester the lord claimed the wardship and marriage of his socagere.
Before the abolition of feudal burdens by the Commonwealth, con firmed upon the Restoration by 12 Car. II. c. 24, tenants in socage were bound to pay 20s. upon every 201. of annual value, as an aid for making the lord's sun a knight, and the same for marrying the lord's eldest daughter. This tenure was also subject to the payment of fines upon alienation& By the above statute, the provisions of which were extended to Ireland by the Irish act of 14 and 15 Car. II. c. 19, tenure by knight's service was abolished, and all lands, with the-exception of ecclesiastical lands held in free alms [FliasicaulotoNe], were directed to be held in free and common socage, which, with the limited exception iu favour of lauds held in frankalmoigne, is now the universal tenure of real pro perty throughout England and Ireland, and those colonies which have been settled by the English.
It is true that a large portion of the soil of all those countries is held by leaseholders, and in England also by copyholders ; but the freehold of the land held by leaseholders and copyholders is in their lords or lessors, who hold that freehold by socage tenures.