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 despatch 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 can not 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.
[Feudalism and army service.]
That this process had already done much of its work when the old English
army received its last summons, we can not 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 a unit an honour, an 'honour of five hides[652].' 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 útware,' that is, an estate rated as five hides for
military purposes, he is worthy of a thegn's wergild[653]. 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[654]. 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[655]. 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
can not 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[656].' 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[657]. 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.
[Default of service.]
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[658]. 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 can not
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 can not 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[659].' 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[660].
[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 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
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.
[The great lords.]
The kings, the earls and the churches have of course many demesne
manors. Of the ecclesiastical estates we shall speak in our next essay,
for they can be best examined in the light that is cast upon them by the
Anglo-Saxon charters. Here we will merely observe that some of the
churches have not only large, but well compacted territories. The abbey
of St. Etheldreda, for example, besides having outlying manors, holds
the two hundreds which make up the isle of Ely; her property in
Cambridgeshire is valued at £318[677]. The earls also are rich in
demesne manors and so is the king.
[The king as landlord.]
King William is much richer than King Edward was. The Conqueror has been
chary in appointing earls and consequently he has in his hand, not only
the royal manors, but also a great many comital manors, to say nothing
of some other estates which, for one reason or another, he has kept to
himself. Edward had been rich, but when compared with his earls he had
not been extravagantly rich. In Somersetshire, for example, there were
twelve royal manors which may have brought in a revenue of £500 or
thereabouts, while there were fifteen comital manors which were worth
nearly £300[678]. The royal demesne had been a scattered territory; the
king had something in most shires, but was far richer in some than in
others. It was not so much in the number of his manors as in their size
and value that he excelled the richest of his subjects. Somehow or
another he had acquired many of those vills which were to be the smaller
boroughs and the market towns of later days. We may well suppose that
from of old the vills that a king would wish to get and to keep would be
the flourishing vills, but again we can not doubt that many a vill has
prospered because it was the king's.
[The ancient demesne.]
Among the manors which William holds in the south-west a distinction is
drawn by the Exeter Domesday. The manors which the Confessor held are
'The King's Demesne which belongs to the kingdom,' while those which
were held by the house of Godwin are the 'Comital Manors[679].' So in
East Anglia certain manors are distinguished as pertaining or having
pertained to the kingdom or kingship, the _regnum_ or _regio_[680]. This
does not seem to have implied that they were inalienably annexed to the
crown, for King Edward had given some of them away. Neither when it
speaks of the time of William, nor when it speaks of the time of Edward,
does our record draw any clear line between those manors which the king
holds as king and those which he holds in his private capacity, though
it may just hint that certain ancient estates ought not to be alienated.
The degree in which the various manors of the crown stood outside the
national system of finance, justice and police we can not accurately
ascertain. Some, but by no means all, pay no geld. Of some it is said
that they have never paid geld. Perhaps in these ingeldable manors we
may see those which constituted the royal demesne of the West Saxon
kings at some remote date. Of the king's vill of Gomshall in Surrey it
is written: 'the villeins of this vill were free from all the affairs of
the sheriff[681],' as though it were no general truth that with a royal
manor the sheriff had nothing to do.
[The comital manors.]