Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England

by Frederic William Maitland

The new military service.

We are not doubting that the Conqueror defined the amount of military service that was to be due to him from each of his tenants in chief, nor are we suggesting that he paid respect to the rule about the five hides, but it seems questionable whether he introduced any very new principle. A new theoretic element may come to the front, a contractual element:—the tenant in chief must bring up his knights because that is the service that was stipulated for when he received his land. But we cannot say that even this theory was unfamiliar to the English. The rulers of the churches had been giving or ‘loaning’ lands to thegns. In so doing they had not been dissipating the wealth of the saints without receiving some ‘valuable consideration’ for the gift or the loan (lǽn); they looked to their thegns for the military service that their land owed to the king. To this point we must return in our next essay; but quite apart from definitely feudal bargains between the king and his magnates, between the magnates and their dependants, a definition of the duty of military service which connects it with the ownership of land (and to such a definition men will come so soon as the well-armed few can defeat the ill-armed many) will naturally produce a state of things which will be patient of, even if it will not engender, a purely feudal explanation. If one of the men to whom the Bishop of Worcester looks for military service makes a default, the fine that is due from him will go to the bishop, not to the king. Why so? One explanation will be that the bishop has over him a sake and soke of the very highest order, which comprehends even that fyrd-wíte, that fine for the neglect of military duty, which is one of the usually reserved pleas of the crown[661]. Another explanation will be that this man has broken a contract that he made with the bishop and therefore owes amends to the bishop:—to the bishop, not to the king, who was no party to the contract. Sometimes the one explanation will be the truer, sometimes the other. Sometimes both will be true enough. As a matter of fact, we believe that these men of the Bishop of Worcester or their predecessors in title have solemnly promised to do whatever service the king demands from the bishop[662]. Still we can hardly doubt which of the two explanations is the older, and, if we attribute to the Norman invaders, as perhaps we may, a definite apprehension of the theory that knight’s service is the outcome of feudal compacts, this still leaves open the inquiry whether the past history of military service in Frankland had not been very like the past history of military service in England. Already in the days of Charles the Great the duty of fighting the Emperor’s battles was being bound up with the tenure of land by the operation of a rule very similar to that of which we have been speaking. The owner of three (at a later time of four) manses was to serve; men who held but a manse apiece were to group themselves together to supply soldiers. Then at a later time the feudal theory of free contract was brought in to explain an already existing state of things[663].

The thegns.

Closely connected with this matter is another thorny topic, namely, the status of the thegn and the relation of the thegn to his lord. In the Confessor’s day many maneria had been held by thegns; some of them were still holding their lands when the survey was made and were still called thegns. The king’s thegns were numerous, but the queen also had thegns, the earls had thegns, the churches had thegns and we find thegns ascribed to men who were neither earls nor prelates but themselves were thegns[664]. Many of the king’s thegns were able to give or sell the lands that they held, ‘to go to whatever lord they pleased[665].’ On the other hand, many of the thegns of the churches held lands which they could not ‘withdraw’ from the churches[666]; in other words ‘the thegn-lands’ of the church could not be separated from the church[667]. The Conqueror respected the bond that tied them to the church. The Abbot of Ely complained to him that the foreigners had been abstracting the lands of S^t. Etheldreda. His answer was that her demesne manors must at once be given back to her, while as for the men who have occupied her thegnlands, they must either make their peace with the abbot or surrender their holdings[668]. Thus the abbot seems to have had the benefit of that forfeiture which his thegns incurred by espousing the cause of Harold. We see therefore that the relation between thegn, lord and land varied from case to case. The land might have proceeded from the lord and be held of the lord by the thegn as a perpetually inheritable estate, or as an estate granted to him for life, or granted to him and two successive heirs[669]; on the other hand, the lord’s hold over the land might be slight and the bond between thegn and lord might be a mere commendation which the thegn could at any time dissolve. Again, the relation between thegn and lord is no longer conceived as a menial, ‘serviential’ or ministerial relation. The Taini Regis are often contrasted with the Servientes Regis[670]. The one trait of thegnship which comes out clearly on the face of our record is that the thegn is a man of war[671]. But even this trait is obscured by language which seems to show that there has been a great redistribution of military service. Though there is no Latin word that will translate thegn except miles, though these two terms are never contrasted with each other, and though there are thegns still existing, still of these two terms one belongs to the old, the other to the new order of things[672]. Thus thegnship is already becoming antiquated and we are left to guess from older dooms and later Leges what was its essence in the days of King Edward.

Nature of thegnship.

The task is difficult for we can see that this institution has undergone many changes in the course of a long history and yet can not tell how much has remained unchanged. We begin by thinking of thegnship as a relation between two men. The thegn is somebody’s thegn. The household of the great man, but more especially the king’s household, is the cradle of thegnship. The king’s thegns are his free servants—servants but also companions. In peace they have duties to perform about his court and about his person; they are his body-guard in war. Then the king—and other great lords follow his example—begins to give lands to his thegns, and thus the nature of the thegnship is modified. The thegn no longer lives in his lord’s court; he is a warrior endowed with land. Then the thegnship becomes more than a relationship, it becomes a status. The thegn is a ‘twelve hundred man’; his wergild and his oath countervail those of six ceorls. This status seems to be hereditary; the thegn’s sons are ‘dearer born’ than are the sons of the ceorl[673]. But we can not tell how far this principle is carried. We can not easily reconcile this hereditary transmission of thegn-right with the original principle that thegnship is a relation between two men. We may have thegns who are nobody’s thegns, or else we may have persons entitled to the thegnly wergild who yet are not thegns. What is more, since the law which regulates the inheritance of land does not favour the first-born, we may have poor thegns and landless thegns. Yet another principle comes into play. A duty of finding well armed warriors for the host is being territorialized; every five hides should find a soldier. The thegn from of old has to attend the host with adequate equipment; the men who under the new system have to attend the host with horse and heavy armour are usually thegns. Then the man who has five hides, and who therefore ought to put a warrior into the field, is a thegn or is entitled to be a thegn. The ceorl obtains the thegnly wergild if he has an estate rated for military purposes at five hides. Another version of this tradition requires of the ceorl who ‘thrives to thegn-right’ five hides of his own land, a church, a kitchen, a house in the burh, a special office in the king’s hall. To be ‘worthy of thegn-right’ may be one thing, to be a thegn, another. To be a thegn one must be some one’s thegn. The prosperous ceorl will be no thegn until he has put himself under some lord. But the bond between him and his lord may be dissoluble at will and may hardly affect his land. It is, we repeat, very difficult to discover how these various principles were working together, checking and controlling each other in the first half of the eleventh century. Several inconsistent elements seem to be blended. There is the element of hereditary caste:—the thegn transmits thegnly blood to his offspring. There is the element of personal relationship:—he is the thegn of some lord and owes fealty to that lord. There is the military element:—he is a warrior who has horse and heavy armour and is bound to fight the nation’s battles. Connected with this last there is the proprietary element:—each five hides must send a warrior to the host; the man with five hides is entitled to become, perhaps he may be compelled to become a thegn, a warrior[674].

The thegns of Domesday.

On the whole, we gather from Domesday Book that the military element is subduing the others. The thegn is the man who for one reason or another is a warrior. For one reason or another, we say; for the class of thegns is by no means homogeneous. On the one hand, we see the thegns of the churches, who have been endowed by the prelates in order that they may do the military service due from the ecclesiastical lands. Many of the prelates have thegns, and for the creation of thegnlands by the churches it would not be easy to find any explanation save that which we have already found in the territorialization of military service. The thegn might pay some annual ‘recognition’ to the church, he might send his labourers to help his lord for a day or two at harvest time; but we may be sure that he was not rack-rented and that, if military service be left out of account, the church was a loser by endowing him. Here the land proceeds from the lord to the thegn; the thegn can not give or sell it; the holder of that land can have no lord but the church; if he forfeits the land, he forfeits it to the church. But, on the other hand, we see numerous king’s thegns who are able ‘to go to what lord they please.’ We may see in them landed proprietors who by the play of ‘the five hide rule’ have become bound to serve as warriors. We may be fairly certain that they have not been endowed by the king, otherwise they would not enjoy the liberty, that marvellous liberty, of leaving him, of putting themselves under the protection and the banner of some earl or some prelate. Not that every thegn will (if we may borrow phrases from a later age) possess a full ‘thegn’s fee’ or owe the service of a whole warrior. Large groups of thegns we may see who obviously are brothers or cousins enjoying in undivided shares the inheritance of some dead ancestor. They may take it in turns to go to the war; the king may hold the eldest of them responsible for all the service; but each of them will be called a thegn, will be entitled to a thegnly wergild and swear a thegnly oath. Still, on the whole, the thegn of Domesday Book is a warrior, and he holds—though perhaps along with his coparceners—land that is bound to supply a warrior.

Greater and lesser thegns.

In the main all thegns seem to have the same legal status, though they may not be all of equal rank. All of them seem to have the wergild of twelve hundred shillings. A law of Cnut, after describing the heriot of the earl, distinguishes two classes of thegns; there is ‘the king’s thegn who is nighest to him’ and whose heriot includes four horses and 50 mancuses of gold, and ‘the middle thegn’ or ‘less thegn’ from whom he gets but one horse and one set of arms or £2.[675] This law should we think be read in connexion with the rule that is recorded by Domesday Book as prevailing in the shires of Derby and Nottingham:—the thegn who had fewer than seven manors paid a relief of 3 marks to the sheriff, while he who had seven and upwards paid £8 to the king[676]. A rude line is drawn between the richer and the poorer thegns of the king. The former deal immediately with the king and pay their reliefs directly to him; the latter are under the sheriff and their reliefs are comprised in his farm. Thus the wealthy thegns, like the barones maiores of later days, are ‘nigher to’ the king than are the ‘less-thegns’ or those barones minores who in a certain sense are their successors.