Many of the early ones, and most of the barreled actions, did not have the lugs
Yep! Have seen relatively few of the extra-lug barreled actions. I bought my first Mark X around 1990, a .375 H&H that was one of the "Whitworth" models, but stuck in a very cheap injection-molded stock. It did not have the barrel lug.
Also bought a .416 Remington barreled action from Brownells maybe a couple years later, and it didn't have the extra barrel-lug either.
