DOMESDAY SURVEY 



appearance in any county. In reaction from Thierry, who insisted on the 

 expropriation of all Englishmen as such, Mr. Freeman was disposed to 

 make the most of all the cases in which men of the conquered race can be 

 proved to have held land or wealth under the Norman kings. 1 In par- 

 ticular he made the existence of this class of king's thegns a test by which 

 to determine the circumstances under which the several counties of 

 England came under William's power. Where no Englishmen appear as 

 holding of the crown, as in Kent and Sussex, he maintained that a severe 

 resistance to the Conqueror on the part of the shire had caused its thegns 

 to lose their lands ; where, as in Derbyshire and in Nottinghamshire 

 they are to be found, he argued that a timely submission had been the 

 cause of the king's favour. But the status of the class does not support 

 so far reaching a theory. The king's thegns did not rank with the 

 tenants in chief by military service ; they are placed after the sergeants in 

 those counties where both occur, and they quickly died out as a distinct 

 class south of the Humber under the sons of the Conqueror. There was 

 no place for them in the feudal system which was growing up under the 

 Norman kings. The conditions of their tenure, so far as these can be 

 gathered from authorities of later date than Domesday, were proper to an 

 older system of society than the feudalism of the end of the eleventh 

 century they could not be fitted into the new scheme and they dis- 

 appeared. Moreover in Derbyshire at least their holdings were insig- 

 nificant in extent. Out of a total of 700 carucates cast upon the whole 

 shire the king's thegns only held twenty-three, and their current value 

 is only returned as 14 4*. 8*/. out of a total valet for the county of 

 425. With regard to the individual members of the class it does 

 not seem that we can recover any personal detail. There seems to be 

 nothing to mark them off from the undistinguished crowd of landholders 

 who did not survive the Conquest. Very rarely does the Domesday 

 thegn appear to be identical with the man who held his land in King 

 Edward's time. At Ilkeston, part of which had been held by one 

 Osmund, styled 'benz,' we are told that 'he himself holds it of the 

 king,' and the same formula appears at ' Cellesdene,' the former owner of 

 which was an Osmund. So careless are the Domesday scribes about the 

 names of Englishmen that it is quite possible that these two men may be 

 identical. An Earnwig (Ernui) held at Clowne the land which he had 

 held in King Edward's time, and it is probable that the 'Toli' who held 

 the greater part of Sandiacre in 1086 was the same as the 'Toli' who 

 with two other thegns, one of whom bore the historic name of Cnut, had 

 held the same manor before the Conquest. Of course, in the twenty 

 years which had passed since that event many changes might take place , 

 in the ordinary course of succession ; in the case of Risley it is distinctly 

 stated that the son of the former owner held of the king, and in several 

 instances the existing tenant is not mentioned by name. 



Before passing from the tenants in chief of Derbyshire to the rural 

 society found on their estates, it will be well to consider the account which 



1 Norman Conquest, iv. passim. See V. C. H. Northanti, i. 324. 



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