The sokeman represented a distinctive class of freeman, most prevalent in the Danelaw counties, who occupied a pivotal social position between the landed thegn and the unfree villein. While they enjoyed the status of free men—possessing the right to sell their land, serve on juries, and fulfill military obligations—they were inextricably bound to a superior's 'soke' or jurisdictional authority. This meant they were required to attend the lord's court and render specific, often fixed, services or rent in exchange for their tenure, rather than the more onerous labor required of lower peasantry. Throughout the eleventh century, the sokeman’s status was characterized by this duality of personal freedom and judicial dependence.
Following the Norman Conquest, the status of the sokeman underwent a gradual erosion as the rigid structures of Continental feudalism were imposed. In the Domesday Book of 1086, thousands of sokemen are recorded, particularly in East Anglia and the East Midlands, serving as a vital economic and administrative layer of the rural community. However, as the legal distinction between free and unfree tightened in the twelfth century, many sokemen were absorbed into the general category of free tenants or saw their obligations drift toward those of the manorial peasantry, though the concept survived in the legal form of 'socage' tenure until the seventeenth century.