price he will,[1] that is, he is in the king's mercy. He even has his own pleas for which a 'wed', or security, of 6 ore has to be given by those brought before him as against the 'wed' of 6 half-marks for a king's plea and 12 ore for an earl's or a bishop's.[2] He is the 'hlaford' who has his 'hiredmen' in his own 'borh',[3] and in 'bocland' takes that share of the 'wed' and the 'lahcop' of an accused man and of the wite of a guilty one which in 'folcland' went to the king,[4] as well as the 'landrica' who has his 'overhiernesse',[5] and his 'burhgeat' where he holds a court for all the men in his 'soc',[6] and his 'setl' in the king's hall.[7] 'Cyngcs thegn' thus appears in the Anglo-Saxon laws as the technical and juridical name of a royal official who has in his 'bocland' judicial and administrative rights and duties akin to a sheriff's.
This technical use of 'cynges thegn' makes it peculiarly interesting to compare with the Saxon original of Cnut's law on heriots the several Latin and French versions of it made by the Norman clerks between 1090 and 1150. In the 'Quadripartitus' (i. 71) and the 'Leges Henrici' (c. 14), where the chapter is entitled 'De Releuationibus', 'cynges thegna' is rendered 'taini regis,'[8] and 'medemra thegna', 'mediocris taini'; in the 'Consiliatio Cnuti' (c. 71) these terms are rendered respectively 'uironis regis' and 'minoris uironis'; and in the 'Leis Willelme' (c. 20) 'barun' and 'vavasur'; while in the 'Instituta Cnuti' (ii, c. 71), which gives the heriot of the king's thane in the Danelaw only, 'cynges thegnes … the his socne haebbe' is rendered 'liberalis hominis qui consuetudines suas habet, quem Angli dicunt kinges thegen', and 'medemra thegna' as 'mediocris hominis quem Angli dicunt laesse thegen'. Clearly, to the Normans the 'baro', the 'uiro regis', the 'cynges thegn', and the free man who had his customs, were one and the same, as were the 'vavasor', the 'minor uiro', the 'laesse' or 'medume
- ↑ II Cnut, c. 15 (1). In the Leis Willelme, c. 39 (1), the last clause runs, 'perde sa franchise, si al rei nei pot reacheter a soun plaisir'; and in the Leges Henrici, c. 34, it runs, 'et thegenscypes (honore) et omni iudicaria dignitate priuetur', showing clearly that it was not only an office but a judicial office that was forfeited.
- ↑ III Athelred, c. 12.
- ↑ II Cnut, c. 31.
- ↑ V Athelstan, c. 1; IV Edgar, c. 8; III Aethelred, c. 3; II Cnut, c. 37. Cf. Northumbrian Priests' Law, cc. 48-59.
- ↑ Leges Henrici, c. 80 (9 b); cf. cc. 41, 42.
- ↑ Petit-Dutaillis, Studies supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional History, pp. 40-1. See Rotuli Hundredorum, ii. 206, for the Court of Pevensey Castle.
- ↑ Rectitudines, c. 2.
- ↑ It is only in this passage and that quoted in note 4, p. 171, that the Norman scribes use 'tainus regis' strictly in the technical sense. In Domesday, as a rule, the 'taini regis' are simply 'thanes who hold of the king', whether they be king's thanes in the technical sense, like Gamel, son of Osbert, who T.R.E. had sac and soc, toll and team in what was afterwards the barony of Cottingham (Domesday Book, i. 298 b, 328, 331; Plac. de Quo Warr. p. 199), or 'mean' thanes, like the Lancashire ones.
