第 17 页

NOTES:

1. D. B. ii. 174: 'Hec villa fuit in duobus maneriis T. R. E.' Ibid. i. 164: 'De his 2 villis fecit Comes W. unum manerium.'

2. Inquisitio, 77-9.

3. This result comes out correctly if 1 H = 4 V = 120 A. For the state of this vill T. R. W. see Round, Feudal England, 40.

4. His plot at Orwell is said to belong to Harlton. Then at Harlton we find an Achil with sokemen under him, and though in D. B. he is described as a king's thegn, this is not incompatible with his being the man of Harold for some of his lands. At Barrington Achillus Danaus homo Haroldi has a holding of 40 acres.

5. Inquisitio, 86.

6. Ibid. 68.

7. Ibid. 43, 44, 45, 73, 76.

8. D. B. i. 195.

9. D. B. i. 139: 'De consuetudine 1 averam inveniebat cum Rex in scyra veniebat, si non 5 den. reddebat.' D. B. i. 190, '[Sochemanni in Fuleberne] reddunt per annum 8 libras arsas et pensatas et unoquoque anno 12 equos et 12 inguardos si Rex in vicecomitatu veniret, si non veniret 12 sol. et 8 den.; T. R. E. non reddebant vicecomiti nisi averas et inguardos vel 12 sol. et 8 den. et superplus invasit Picot [vicecomes] super Regem.'

10. Wratworth has completely disappeared from the modern map; its territory seems to be included in that of the present Orwell. See Rot. Hund. ii. 559 and Lysons, Magna Britannia, ii. 243. A small hamlet called Malton seems to represent it. Whitwell also is no longer the name of a village, while the modern Coton is not mentioned in D. B. There is now a Whitwell Farm near the village of Coton, but in the parish of Barton. The modern Coton does not seem to be the ancient Whitwell, for on Subsidy Rolls we may find Whitwell annexed to Barton and Coton to Grantchester.

11. The figures in our first column represent the division of the vill among the Norman lords. H. V. A. stand for Hides, Virgates, Acres. By C. and B. we signify the Carucae and Boves for which 'there was land.'

12. There is some small error in this case.

13. A small conjectural emendation.

14. The Inq. Com. Cant. says 6 hides.

15. An error of one hide in the particulars. The two records do not fully agree.

16. A small emendation justified by Inq. Eliensis (Hamilton, p. 110).

17. AElfgar died before King Edward; Freeman, Norman Conquest, ed. 3, iii. 469, places his death in or about 1062.

18. The history of the earldoms during Edward's reign is exceedingly obscure. See Freeman's elaborate note: Ibid., 555. In particular Cambridgeshire seems to have lain now in one and now in another earldom. Thus it comes about that Cambridgeshire sokemen are commended some to AElfgar, some to Waltheof, some to Harold, some to Gyrth. AElfgar, for example, had at one time been earl in East Anglia. Men who had commended themselves to an earl would, unless they 'withdrew themselves,' still be his men though he had ceased to be earl of their county.

19. See above, p. 137. Observe how frequently our record speaks of 'sochemanni homines Algari' and the like. These. sokemen are AElfgar's men; but are not properly his sokemen.

20. Inq. Com. Cant. 110. This is from the Inquisitio Eliensis. Compare p. 113.

21. Inq. Com. Cant. 77-8.

22. Rot. Hund. ii. 558.

23. One instance may suffice. In Sawston (Rot. Hund. ii. 575-80) are three manors, A, B, C; A has a sub-manor. One Thomas Dovenel holds in villeinage of the lord of A; in villeinage of the lord of B; in freehold of the lord of B; in freehold of a tenant of the lord of B; in freehold of a tenant of a tenant of the lord of B.

24. Rot. Hund. ii. 580.

25. On four out of the five manors the rent is 2s. 3d.; on the fifth 3s. 0d.

26. Inq. Com. Cant. 41.

27. D. B. i. 137 b.

28. D.B. i. 141 b.

29. Inq. Com. Cant. pp. 108-110. As names of the Abbot of Ely's we have Grimmus, sokemen in Meldreth and neighbouring villages we have Grimmus, Alsi Cild, Wenesi, Alsi, Leofwinus, AEdricus, Godwinus, Almarus, Aluricus frater Goduuini, AEdriz, Alsi Berd, Alricus Godingessune, Wenestan, Alwin Blondus, Alfuuinus, Aluredus, Alricus Brunesune, Alware, Hunud, Hunwinus, Brizstanus. This does not point to a preponderance of Norse or Danish blood.

30. Owing to the wasted condition of Yorkshire, the information that we obtain of the T. R. E. is meagre and perfunctory. But what seems characteristic of this county is a holding of two or three ploughlands which we might fairly call an embryo manor.

31. See the early extents in Cart. Rams. iii. Thus (242) at Hemingford: 'R. V. tenet tres virgatas et dimidiam et sequitur hundredum et comitatum.... R. H. tenet duas virgatas et sequitur hundredum et comitatum.' Elsworth (249): 'R. filius T. duas virgatas. Pro altera sequitur comitatum et hundredum; pro altera solvit quinque solidos.' Brancaster (261): 'Cnutus avus Petri tenebat terram suam libere in tempore Regis Henrici et sequebatur comitatum et hundredum, et fuit quietus ab omni servitio.' See also Vinogradoff, Villainage, 441 ff.

32. Some thirty years ago the whole political world of England was agitated by controversy about the 'compound householder.' Was he to have a vote? The historian of the nineteenth century will not treat the compound householders as forming one homogeneous class of men whose general status could be marked off from that of other classes. Nor, it is to be hoped, will etymological guesses lead him to believe that the compound householder held a compound house. He will say that a landlord 'compounded for' the rates of the aforesaid householder. Mutatis mutandis, may not the villein have been the compound householder of the eleventh century?

33. D. B. ii. 204: '3 liberi homines... semper arant cum 3 bobus.'

34. D. B. ii. 184 b.

35. D. B. ii. 192 b.

36. D. B. i. 211.

37. D. B. i. 218 b. Compare the 'dimidius porcus' of ii. 287.

38. D. B. i. 213 b; 'Hanc terram tenuerunt homines villae communiter et vendere potuerunt.'

39. D. B. i. 210, 212 b, 213 b.

40. D. B. i. 214: 'In Meldone Johannes de Roches occupavit iniuste 25 acras super homines qui villam tenent.' This is a vague phrase.

41. e. g. D. B. i. 112 b: 'Colsuen homo Episcopi Constantiensis aufert ab hoc manerio communem pasturam quae ibi adiacebat T. R. E. et etiam T. R. W. quinque annis.'

42. D. B. ii. 339 b.

43. D. B. i. I40 b.

44. D. B. i. 75: 'tercia vero pars vel tercia quercus erat Comitis Eduini.'

45. D. B. ii. 404 b: 'et in tercio anno quarta pars mol [endini].'

46. D. B. ii. 291 b.

47. D. B. ii. 24 b.

48. D. B. ii. 438.

49. D. B. i. 83 : 'sex taini in paragio,' 'quatuor taini in paragio.' Ibid. 83 b: 'novem taini in paragio.' Ibid. 168 b: 'quinque fratres tenuerunt pro 5 maneriis et poterant ire quo volebant et pares erant.'

50. D. B. i. 96 b: 'dim. hida quam tenebat T. R. E. unus tainus in paragio.' Ibid. 40: 'Brictric tenuit de episcopo in paragio.'

51. But it was possible for several men to be holding in parage and yet for each of them to have a separate manerium. This seems to imply that their holdings were physically separate and that each holding was separately liable for geld, though as regards other matters, e.g. military service, the division was ignored.

52. D. B. i. 291.

53. D. B. i. 145 b.

54. D. B. i. 341.

55. D. B. i. 354.

56. D. B. i. 375 b: 'Siuuate et Alnod et Fenchel et Aschil equaliter et pariliter diviserunt inter se terram patris sui T. R. E. et ita tenuerunt ut si OpUs fuit expeditione Regis et Siuuate potuit ire, alii fratres iuverunt eum. Post istum, ivit alter et Siuuate cum reliquis iuvit eum; et sic de omnibus. Siuuate tamen fuit homo Regis.'

57. D. B. i. 206: 'sex sochemanni id est Aluuoldus et 5 fratres eius habuerunt 4 hid. et dim. ad geldum.'

58. D. B. i. 233: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt 2 fratres pro 2 maneriis, et postea emit alter ab altero partem suam et fecit unum manerium de duobus T. R. E.'

59. D. B. i. 127 b: 'Hoc manerium tenent villani ad firmam canonicorum.'

60. D. B. i. 162 b.

61. D. B. i. 69.

62. D. B. ii. 118 b Yarmouth: 'De gersuma has 4 libras dant burgenses gratis et amicitia.'

63. Thus D. B. iv. 568: 'Due ville reddunt 30 sol. de cornagio.' Ib. 570: Queryngdonshire reddit 76 sol. de cornagio.'

64. Black Book of Peterborough, passim.

65. Hist. Engl. Law, i. 550.

66. Edgar iv. 8. 9.

67. Ibid. 6.

68. Leg. Edw. Conf. 24.

69. Leg. Edw. Conf. 15. Compare Leg. Henr. 91; Leg. Will. Conq. i. 22; Leg. Will Conq. iii. 3

70. Leg. Henr. 7 sect. 7.

71. It is possible that the entry (i. 204) which tells how the sokemen of Broughton enjoyed the smaller wites points to a free village court; but we have put another interpretation upon this; see above, p. 130.

8. The Feudal Superstructure

It remains that we should speak very briefly of the higher ranks of men and the tenure by which they held their land. Little accurate information can be extorted from our record. The upper storeys of the old English edifice have been demolished and a new superstructure has been reared in their stead. It is not the office of Domesday Book to tell us much even of the new nobility, of the services which the counts and barons are to render to the king in return for their handsome endowments: -- as to the old nobility, that has perished. Still there are some questions that we ought to ask. The general theory that all land tenure, except indeed the tenure by which the king holds land in demesne, is dependent tenure, seems to be implied, not only by many particular entries, but also by the whole scheme of the book. Every holder of land, except the king, holds it of (de) some lord, and therefore every acre of land that is not royal demesne can be arranged under the name of some tenant in chief. Even a church will hold its land, if not of the king, then of some other lord.(1*) The terms of the tenure are but very rarely described, for Domesday Book is no feodary. Just now and again a tenure in elemosina is noticed and in some of these cases this term seems already to bear the technical sense that it will have in later days; the tenant owes a spiritual, but no secular service.(2*) A few instances of what later lawyers would call a 'tenure by divine service,' as distinct from a tenure in frank-almoin, may be found.(3*) A few words here and there betray the existence of tenure by knight's service and of castle guard.(4*) In the servientes Regis who have been enfeoffed in divers counties we may see the predecessors of the tenants by serjeanty.(5*) We shall remark, however, the absence of those abstract terms which are to become the names of the various tenures. We read of servientes, sochemanni, villani, burgenses, but not of seriantia,(6*) socagium, villenagium, burgagium. As we pursue our retrogressive course through the middle ages, we do not find that the law of personal condition becomes more and more distinct from the law of land tenure; on the contrary, the two become less and less separable. It has sometimes been said that a feudal tenure was the only kind of land tenure that the Norman conquerors could conceive. In a certain sense this may be true, but we should have preferred to say that probably they could not easily conceive a kind of tenure that was not dependent: -- every one who holds land (except he be the king) holds it of someone else. The adjective 'feudal' was not in their vocabulary, and their use of the word feudum -- occasionally we meet the older feum(7*) -- is exceedingly obscure. Very rarely does it denote a tenure or a mass of rights; usually, though it may connote rights of a certain order, it denotes a stretch of land; thus we may read of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux, thereby being meant the territory which the bishop holds. Occasionally, however, we hear of a man holding land in feudo. One instance may be enough to show that such a phrase did not imply military tenure: -- 'William the Chamberlain held this manor in feudo of the Queen [Matilda] at a rent of ? a year and after her death he held it in the same fashion of the king.'(8*) All sense of militariness, and all sense of precariousness, that the word has ever had in its continental history, seems to be disappearing. Already the process has begun which will make it applicable to every person who has heritable rights in land. William the Chamberlain is, we take it, already a fee farmer, that is, a rent-paying tenant with heritable rights.(9*) As to the word beneficium, which feum or feudum has been supplanting, we shall hardly find it with its old meaning. It seems to be holding its own onlv within the sphere of ecclesiastical rights, where the 'benefice' will survive until our own day.(10*) A yet more interesting and equally foreign word is not unfrequently used, namely, alodium. The Norman commissioners deemed that a large number of English tenants in Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire and some in Berkshire had been alodiarii or aloarii and had held in alodium or sicut alodium. The appearance of this term in one district and ln one only is far from proving that there had been anything peculiar in the law of that district. It may well be a mere chance that the liberi homines of other counties are not called alodiaries. Still in Hampshire, where alod韆r韊s abounded, it was not every free man holding land who had an alod.(11*) Perhaps we shall be right in thinking that the term pointed to heritability: -- the free man who holds land but has no alod has only an estate for life. Certainly it does not mean that the tenant has no lord. The alodiary may hold his alod 'of' his lord'.(12*) he may owe service to , his lord.(13*) he may pay a relief.(14*) he may have no power 'to withdraw himself with his land' from his lord.(15*) The Norman lawyers had no speculative objection to the existence of alodiaries; it in no way contradicted such doctrine of tenure as they had formed. In 1086 there were still alodiaries in Berkshire,(16*) and in royal charters of a much later day there is talk of the alodiaries of Kent as of an existing class.(17*) It is just possible that William's commissioners saw some difference between holding in feudo and holding in alodio. If ever they contrasted the two words, they may have hinted that while the feudum has been given by the lord to the man, the alodium has been brought by the man to the lord; but we cannot be very certain that they ever opposed these terms to each other.(18*) Such sparse evidence as we can obtain from Normandy strengthens our belief that the wide, the almost insuperable, gulf that modern theorists have found or have set between 'alodial ownership' and 'feudal tenure' was not perceptible in the eleventh century.(19*) It can be no part of our task to trace the history of these terms alodium and feudum behind the date at which they are brought into England but hereafter we shall see that here in England a process had been at work which, had these terms been in use, would have brought the alod very near to the feud, the feud very near to the alod. It is probable that this process had gone somewhat further in Normandy than in England. It is probable that the Normans knew that in imposing upon all English lands 'the formula of dependent tenure' they were simplifying matters. They seem to think, and they may be pretty right in thinking, that every English land-holder had held his land under (sub) some lord; but apparently they do not think that every English land-holder had held his land of (de) some lord. Not infrequently they show that this is so. Thus one Sigar holds a piece of Cambridgeshire of Geoffrey de Mandeville; he used to hold it under AEsgar the Staller.(20*) We catch a slight shade of difference between the two prepositions; sub lays stress on the lord's power, which may well be of a personal or justiciary, rather than of a proprietary kind, while de imports a theory about the origin of the tenure; it makes the tenant's rights look like derivative rights: -- it is supposed that he gets his land from his lord. And at least in the eastern counties -- so it may well have seemed to the Normans -- matters sadly needed simplification. Even elsewhere and when a large estate is at stake they cannot always get an answer to the question 'Of whom was this land holden?(21*) Still they thought that some of the greatest men in the realm had held their lands, or some of their lands, of the king or of someone else. The formulas which are used throughout the description of Hampshire and some other counties seem to assume that every holder of a manor, at all events if a layman, had held it of the king, if he did not hold it of another lord. Tenure in feudo again they regarded as no innovation.(22*) They saw the work of subinfeudation: -- Brihtmaer held land of Azor and Azor of Harold; we may well suppose that Harold held it of the king and that some villeins held part of it of Brihtmaer, and thus we see already a feudal ladder with no less than five rungs.(23*) They saw that the thegns owed 'service' to their lords.(24*) They saw the heriot; they sometimes called it a relief.(25*) We cannot be sure that this change of names imported any change in the law; when a burgess of Hereford died the king took a heriot, but if he could not get the heriot he took the dead man's land.(26*) They saw that in certain cases an heir had to 'seek' his ancestor's lord if he wished to enjoy his ancestor's land.(27*) They saw that many a free man could not give or sell his land without his lord's consent. They saw that great and powerful men could not give or sell their land without the king's consent.(28*) They saw something very like military tenure. No matter with which we have to deal is darker than the constitution of the English army on the eve of its defeat. We may indeed safely believe that no English king had ever relinquished the right to call upon all the free men of his realm to resist an invader. On the other hand, it seems quite clear that, as a matter of fact, 'the host' was no longer 'the nation in arms.' The common folk of a shire could hardly be got to fight outside their shire, and ill-armed troops of peasants were now of little avail. The only army upon which the king could habitually rely was a small force. The city of Oxford sent but twenty men or twenty pounds.(29*) Leicester sent twelve men:(30*) Warwick sent ten.(31*) In Berkshire the law was that, if the king called out the host, one soldier (miles) should go for every five hides and should receive from each hide four shillings as his stipend for two months' service. If the man who was summoned made default, he forfeited all his land to the king; but there were cases in which he might send one of his men as a substitute, and for a default committed by his substitute he suffered no forfeiture, but only a fine of fifty shillings.(32*) It is probable that a similar 'five-hide rule' obtained throughout a large part of England. The borough of Wilton was bound to send twenty shilling or one man 'as for an honour of five hides.'(33*) When an army or a fleet was called out, Exeter 'served to the amount of five hides.'(34*) All this points to a small force of well armed soldiers. For example, 'the five-hide rule' would be satisfied if Worcestershire sent a contingent of 240 men. But not only was the army small; it was a territorial army; it grew out of the soil. At first sight this 'five-hide rule' may seem to have in it little that is akin to a feudal system of knights' fees. We may suppose that it will work thus: -- The host is summoned; the number of hides in each hundred is known. To dispatch a company of soldiers proportioned to the number of the hides, for example twenty warriors if the hundred contains just one hundred hides, is the business of the hundred court and the question 'Who must go?' will be answered by election, rotation or lot. But it is not probable that the territorializing process will stop here, and this for several reasons. An army that cannot be mobilized without the action of the hundred moots is not a handy force. While the hundredors are deliberating, the Danes or Welshmen will be burning and slaying. Also a king will not easily be content with the responsibility of a fluctuating and indeterminate body of hundredors; he will insist, if he can, that there must be some one person answerable to him for each unit of military power. A serviceable system will not have been established until the country is divided into 'five-hide units,' until every man's holding is such an unit, or is composed of several such units, or is an aliquot share of such an unit. Then again the holdings with which the rule will have to deal are not homogeneous; they are not all of one and the same order. It is not as though to each plot of land there corresponded some one person who was the only person interested in it; the occupiers of the soil have lords and again those lords have lords. The king will insist, if he can, that the lords who stand high in this scale must answer to him for the service that is due from all the lands over which they exercise a dominion, and then he will leave them free to settle, as between themselves and their dependants, the ultimate incidence of the burden: -- thus room will be made for the play of free contract. At all events, when, as is not unusual, some lord is the lord of a whole hundred and of its court, the king will regard him as personally liable for the production of the whole contingent that is due from that hundred. In this way a system will be evolved which for many practical purposes will be indistinguishable from the system of knights' fees, and all this without any help from the definitely feudal idea that military service is the return which the tenant makes to the lord for the gift of land that the lord has made to the tenant. That this process had already done much of its work when the old English army received its last summons, we cannot doubt, though it is very possible that this work had been done sporadically. We see that the land was being plotted out into five-hide units. In one passage the Norman clerks call such unit an honour, an 'honour of five hides'.(35*) There is an old theory based upon legal texts that such an honour qualifies its lord or owner to be a thegn. If a ceorl prospers so that he has five hides 'to the king's 鷗ware,' that is, an estate rated as five hides for military purposes, he is worthy of a thegn's wergild.(36*) Then the Anglo-Saxon charters show us how the kings have been endowing their thegns with tracts of territory which are deemed to contain just five or some multiple of five hides.(37*) The thegn with five hides will have tenants below him; but none of them need serve in the host if their lord goes, as he ought to go, in person. Then each of these territorial units continues to owe the same quantum of military service, though the number of persons interested in it be increased or diminished, and thus the ultimate incidence of the duty becomes the subject-matter of private arrangements. That is the point of a story from Lincolnshire, which we have already recounted: -- A man's land descends to his four sons; they divide it equally and agree to take turns in doing the military service that is due from it; but only the eldest of them is to be the king's man.(38*) Then we see that the great nobles lead or send to the war all the milites that are due from the lands over which they have a seignory. There are already wide lands which owe military service -- we cannot put it otherwise -- to the bishop of Winchester as lord of Taunton:they owe 'attendance in the host along with the men of the bishop.'(39*) The churches of Worcester and Evesham fell out about certain lands at Hamton; one of the disputed questions was whether or no Hamton ought to do its military service 'in the bishop's hundred of Oswaldslaw' or elsewhere.(40*) This question we take to be one of great importance to the bishop. Lord of the triple hundred of Oswaldslaw, lord of three hundred hides, he is bound to put sixty warriors into the field and he is anxious that men who ought to be helping him to make up this tale shall not be serving in another contingent. But from Worcestershire we obtain a still more precious piece of information. The custom of that county is this: -- When the king summons the host and his summons is disregarded by one who is a lord with jurisdiction, 'by one who is so free a man that he has sake and soke and can go with his land where he pleases,' then all his lands are in the king's mercy. But if the defaulter be the man of another lord and the lord sends a substitute in his stead, then he, the defaulter, must pay forty shillings to his lord -- to his lord, not to the king, for the king has had the service that was due; but if the lord does not send a substitute, then the forty shillings which the defaulter pays to the lord, the lord must pay to the king.(41*) A feudalist of the straiter sort might well find fault with this rule. He might object that the lord ought to forfeit his land, not only if he himself fails to attend the host, but also if he fails to bring with him his due tale of milites. Feudalism was not perfected in a day. Still here we have the root of the matter -- the lord is bound to bring into the field a certain number of milites, perhaps one man from every five hides, and if he cannot bring those who are bound to follow him, he must bring others or pay a fine. His man, on the other hand, is bound to him and is not bound to the king. That man by shirking his duty will commit no offence against the king. The king is ceasing to care about the ultimate incidence of the military burden, because he relies upon the responsibility of the magnates. How this system worked in the eastern counties where the power of the magnates was feebler, we cannot tell. It is not improbable that one of the forces that is attaching the small free proprietors to the manors of their lords is this 'five-hide rule'; they are being compelled to bring their acres into five-hide units, to club together under the superintendence of a lord who will answer for them to the king, while as to the villeins, so seldom have they fought that they are ceasing to be 'fyrd-worthy'.(42*) But in the west we have already what in substance are knights' fees. The Bishop of Worcester held 300 hides over which he had sake and soke and all customs; he was bound to put 60 milites into the field; if he failed in this duty he had to pay 40 shillings for each deficient miles. At the beginning of Henry II's reign he was charged with 60 knights' fees.(43*) 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 (laen); 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-w韙e, that fine for the neglect of military duty, which is one of the usually reserved pleas of the crown.(44*) 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.(45*) 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.(46*) 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.(47*) Many of the king's thegns were able to give or sell the lands that they held, 'to go to whatever lord they pleased.'(48*) On the other hand, many of the thegns of the churches held lands which they could not 'withdraw' from the churches;(49*) in other words 'the thegn-lands' of the church could not be separated from the church.(50*) 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 St 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 thegn-lands, they must either make their peace with the abbot or surrender their holdings.(51*) 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;(52*) 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.(53*) The one trait of thegnship which comes out clearly on the face of our record is that the thegnis a man of war.(54*) 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.(55*) 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. The task is difficult for we can see that this institution has undergone many changes in the course of a long history and yet cannot 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 a out 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 contervail those of six ceorls. This status seems to be hereditary; the thegn's sons are 'dearer born' than are the sons of the ceorl.(56*) But we cannot tell how far this principle is carried. We cannot 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.(57*) 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 other 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 thegn-lands 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 cannot 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