jurisdiction, or sokeland

Latin, soca.

Soca, commonly rendered as soke or sokeland, is translated as jurisdiction in the Phillimore edition.

Jurisdictions were the outlying dependencies of a manor which rendered customary payments to the lord of the manor but whose soil was not owned by him. In circuit 6, where all holdings were classified as manors, jurisdictions, or outliers, jurisdictions were emphasised by a marginal S, an abbreviation for soca.

Jurisdictions were commonly components of the large, complex manors characteristic of the Danelaw. Such manors sat, spider-like, at the centre of a web of outliers and jurisdictions which could encompass most of a Wapentake, and sometimes more than one such area. Confusingly, these complex manors are often known as sokes, their dependent jurisdictions as sokelands.

For these complex manors, see F.M. Stenton, Types of manorial structure in the northern Danelaw (1910); and Dawn M. Hadley, The northern Danelaw: its social structure, c.800-1100 (2000).