The Collaborative International Dictionary
Socage \Soc"age\, n.[From Soc; cf. LL. socagium.] (O.Eng. Law) 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. [Written also soccage.]
Note: Socage is of two kinds; free socage, where the
services are not only certain, but honorable; and
villein socage, where the services, though certain,
are of a baser nature.
--Blackstone.
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of socage English)
Usage examples of "soccage".
British capitalists do not turn their attention more to Lower Canada, where land is thus to be bought very cheap, and which only requires manuring, a treatment that it rarely receives from a Canadian, to bring it into heart again, and where the vast extent of the British townships, held in free and common soccage, opens such a field for the agriculturist.
The king shall not claim the wardship of any minor who holds lands by military tenure, of a baron, on pretence that he also holds lands of the crown, by soccage or any other tenure.
East Greenwich, in the County of Kent, in free and common soccage, and not in capite or by knight's service.