This important document is therefore a general description of the services due from the thane to the king, and from the classes in villenage to their manorial lord. And it might be the very model from which the form of the Domesday Survey was taken. Both, in fact, first speak of the lord of the manor, and then of the villein tenants; the latter being in both cases divided into the two main classes of villani and cottiers; for, as already stated, the Saxon thane answered to the Norman lord, the Saxon gebur answered to the villanus of the Survey, and the cotsetle to the cottier or bordarius of the Survey. But these various classes require separate consideration.
III. THE THANE AND HIS SERVICES.
The thane's 'three needs.'
The 'Rectitudines' begins with the thane or lord of the manor; and informs us that he owed his military and other services (for his manor) to the king—always including the three great needs—the trinoda necessitas; viz. (1) to accompany the king in his military expeditions, or fyrd; (2) to aid in the building of his castles, or burhbote; (3) to maintain the bridges, or brigbote.
Thane's 'inland.'
The lord's demesne land was called the 'thane's inland.' So, too, in a law of King Edgar's already quoted, the tithes are ordered to be paid 'as well on the thane's inland as on geneat land,' showing that this distinction between the two was exhaustive.
So also in Scotland, where the old Saxon words were not so soon displaced by Norman terms as in [p135] England, the lord of a manor was long called the thane of such and such a place. In the chronicler Wintoun's story of Macbeth, as well as in Shakespeare's version of it, there are the 'thane of Fyfe' and the 'thane of Cawdor.'
Scotch example of burhbote.
And the circumstance which, according to Wintoun, gave rise to Macbeth's hatred of Macduff is itself a graphic illustration of the 'burhbote,' or aid in castle-building due from the thane to his king:—
And in Scotland than as kyng