T H A 



T H A 



transcriber substituted for T. In Richard of Cirencester it 

 is Thamesis. 



(Ordnance Survey ; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of 

 the British Empire ; Camden's Britannia.) 



THAMES, a certain jurisdiction, though not undis- 

 putedly exclusive, appears to have been immemorially 

 exercised over both the fisheries and navigation of a 

 large portion of the Thames by the mayor and corpo- 

 ration of London, In early times, when fisheries were 

 probably of much greater importance than they are at, pre- 

 sent, the same Kind of encroachments upon them by private 

 individuals which were so often made the subject of com- 

 plaint in other parts of the kingdom were also practised in 

 this river. In 1405 an order was issued from Sir John 

 Woodcock, then lord mayor, enjoining the destruction of 

 wears and nets from Staines to the Medway, in consequence 

 of the injury which they did to the fishery and their 

 obstruction of the navigation. By 4 Hen. VII., c. 15 

 (1487), the mayor of London and his successors were in- 

 vested with the same authority as conservator of the fish 

 in ' all the issues, breaches, and ground overflown as far 

 s Hie water ebbeth and floweth from out of the river 

 Thames,' as he had within the river itself. Before the 

 river was artificially embanked and the adjoining lands 

 drained, this extension was probably of considerable im- 

 portance. During the reign of Elizabeth, in 1584, an order 

 was put forth by the mayor for the purpose of settling the 

 proper times in which various kinds of fish were to be 

 taken. It prohibited fishing in certain parts of the river, 

 and forbade the taking of the white-bait or ' bloodbag.' 

 The right of the corporation however to the conservation 

 of the river about this time was disputed by the lord-high- 

 admiral, and some litigation took place, in which the cor- 

 poration were uniformly successful. James I. in the third 

 year of his reign granted a charter to the city, in which the 

 immemorial right of the city to the office of bailiff and 

 conservator of the Thames is recited and confirmed. The 

 same rights are also confirmed and settled by various other 

 charters and acts of parliament. The result of them is to 

 vi>t in the corporation the conservation of the river, the 

 regulation of the port and harbour of London, and, as is 

 said, the actual property in the soil of the river, subject 

 only to the jus regium of the crown. By this is perhaps to 

 lie understood, that property with which the crown is held 

 to be invested for the purpose of securing to the public 

 the use of the river for trie purposes of navigation, fishing, 

 and other purposes. The portion of the river over which 

 the jurisdiction of the city extended seems to have been 

 always much the same. It is described in the following 

 terms, in an article entitled ' Antient Prescriptive Jurisdic- 

 tions over the Thames,' by Joseph Fletcher, Esq., in the 

 ' Quarterly Journal of the Statistical Society of London,' 

 vol. iv., p. 104 : ' The charters of James I. here quoted are 

 confirmed in one of the 14th of Charles I. They remain to 

 the present day the great record of the city's rights over the 

 river, and it is as such that they are recited in this statute. 

 The offices of meter and conservator are asserted from 

 Staines to the mouth of the Thames, the commencement 

 of the city's jurisdiction being marked by a stone, with an 

 apocryphal date, called London Stone, placed on the north 

 bank of the river, a short distance above the present 

 bridge of Staines, and its termination on the south shore, 

 by the formerly navigable creek of Yantlet, separating the 

 We of Grain from the mainland of Kent, and on the north 

 shore by the village of Leigh, in Essex, placed directly 

 opposite, and close to the lower extremity of Canvey 

 Island. The shore of the Isle of Grain, which separates 

 the mouths of the Thames and Medway, are thus wholly 

 exempt from the city's jurisdiction ; notwithstanding that 

 the right of conservancy is still asserted in the waters of 

 the M fd way, from the southern mouth of Yantlet Creek, 

 upwards towards Rochester, as far as Cockham Wood, 

 which is on the northern shore, opposite the marshy point 

 below Chatham. At all events, the corporation of RO- 

 UT deny the right of the city of London to conserva- 

 torial jurisdiction in the Medway below Yantlet Creek, 

 any more than in the Thames; a limitation which appears 

 to have arisen from this creek having antiently been the 

 customary channel of navigation between the two rivers, 

 and marked the mouths of both. But the passage through 

 this cn-ck being now completely stopped, so that the Isle 

 of Grain is connected by a solid roadway with the parish 

 of Stoke, the mouths of these rivers are properly at the 

 P. C., No. 1523. 



lower extremity of this island, opposite the Nore and 

 Sheerness, while the city's jurisdiction, more antient than 

 this geographical change, is completely cut by it into two 

 separate portions. About twenty years ago it was at- 

 tempted by the city officers, under the direction of a court 

 of conservancy, to reunite these portions, by cutting 

 through the bank which prevents the navigation of fishing- 

 boats through Yantlet Creek ; but the final decision of the 

 Court of King's Bench, given July 8th, 1825, on the 

 motion for a new trial, was against this proceeding. 

 The conservancy jurisdiction in the Medway extends a 

 distance of only eight miles, but has little more than a 

 nominal existence. In the Thames it extends a distance 

 of eighty miles, over nearly the entire course of that river 

 through the metropolitan valley ; and this distance ap- 

 pears to be divided into thirty-four miles of inland navi- 

 gation from Staines to Vauxhall Bridge, the towing-path 

 ceasing at Putney ; three of town thoroughfare, from 

 Vauxhall to London Bridge ; and forty-three of seaport, 

 from London Bridge to Yantlet Creek.' 



In their character of conservators of the Thames the 

 corporation have the control and regulation of the fisheries, 

 and are empowered to seize prohibited nets, fish, &c. 

 They have also the regulation and control of the water- 

 men and of the shipping. They are entrusted with the 

 cleansing of the river, the removal of obstructions, erec- 

 tion of stairs, licensing mills, and other such duties. The 

 lord mayor, with the recorder and other civic officers, holds 

 in person eight courts of conservancy in the year, two for 

 each of the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and 

 Essex, and occasionally a court in London. The greater 

 part of their functions are at the present time intrusted to 

 a committee of the common council, called ' The Thames 

 Navigation and Port of London Committee.' Various acts 

 of parliament saving the jurisdiction of the city of London 

 have been passed for the purpose of preventing and punish- 

 ing offences committed on the river, and the maintaining 

 of a police and magistrates to administer the law. The 

 latest of these is 3 Wm. IV., c. 19. 



(Griffiths' Conservancy of the River Thames; Pulling, 

 On the Laws, $-c. of the City and Port of London ; Stow, 

 Survey of London.) 



THAMMUZ. [ADONIS.] 



THAMNO'BIA, Mr. Swainson's name for a genus of 

 birds (Sylvia, Vieill.) placed by Mr. G. R. Gray in his sub- 

 family Saxicolines, of his family Luscinidf?. 



THAMNOPHILI'NyE, a subfamily of SHRIKES. 



THAMNO'PHILUS, Vieillot's name for a genus of 

 SHRIKES. 



THAMNO'SIA. [SEA WEEDS.] 



THANE, in Anglo-Saxon Thfgn, from thegnian, or 

 tkenicm, ' to serve,' the same word with the modern German 

 (lii'iifii, is frequently, in conformity with this origin, trans- 

 lated minister in the Latin charters of the Anglo-Saxon 

 period. In other cases its equivalent is miles, or fidehs 

 miles. So king Alfred, in his translation of Bede's ' Eccle- 

 siastical History,' renders the king's minister, the king's 

 thane, and uses thane wherever Bede has miles. In this 

 general sense it may be considered as nearly the same with 

 the Norman term liege or liegeman ; and so it seems to 

 have been sometimes used. The exact meaning of the 

 term when employed as a title of honour is involved in 

 considerable obscurity : the rank or dignity which it denoted 

 was possibly not the same at different times, and there 

 were also thanes of more than one kind. The king's thanes, 

 in particular, are distinguished from the medeme (in Latin 

 mediocres), or inferior thanes, who are otherwise designated 

 the thanes of aldermen (the highest order of the Saxon 

 nobility), earls, and other thanes, and who appear to have 

 been very numerous. After the Conquest thanes (thaini or 

 taini) are frequently classed with barons (barones) : in the 

 laws of Henry I., the two words are apparently used as syno- 

 nymous ; and where the Saxon Chronicler has thanes (the- 

 genas), the Latin annalists have commonly barones. These 

 were, of course, the superior or king's thanes. The class of 

 common or inferior thanes, again, seems to have answered 

 nearly to that of the barones minores, or landed gentry. 

 One of the few things that are tolerably certain with regard 

 to the rank of a thane is, that it implied the possession of 

 a certain amount of landed property. Such a qualification 

 indeed seems in certain circumstances to have conferred 

 the dignity of thane. One of the laws of Athelstane de- 

 clares that if a ceorl (or commoner) shall have obtained 



VOL. XXIV, 2 



