I 1920 BARONY AND THANAGE 173 thegn ', and the ' mean ' man. Yet there were notable differences between the Norman ' baro ' and the Saxon ' cynges thegn '. The one held his land by a quota of military service based on a unit of five or ten knights, was liable to wardship and marriage, and paid relief and aids, both at the will of the king ; the other held his land by personal service in the ' utware ', to which he had also to lead the men due from his land under the ' five-hide rule ', and paid heriot and geld, both at fixed rates. These incidents, however, were not peculiar to barony or to thanage, but were shared by the baron with the vavasor and by the king's thane with the ' mean ' thane. Therefore, the Norman clerks who identified the king's thane with the baron must have had regard chiefly for the one thing that they had in common with one another but not with the vavasor and the ' mean ' thane, namely, their justiciary rights. What then were the justiciary rights of a king's thane at the time of the Norman Conquest ? Were they the same as those of a Norman baron ? The laws of the Saxon kings give us no list of them, and their charters, which contain no formula for granting justiciary rights more definite than ' sac and soc, toll and team, and infangthef ',^ do not explicitly connect such a grant with thaneship. In the ' Leis Willelme ' (c. 2), however, we read that in the Danelaw ' the free man (francs hom) who has sac and soc, toll and team, and infangthef, if impleaded in the county and put in forfeiture, shall forfeit to the sheriff 40 ores, but other men who have not this franchise, 32 ores '. Can this ' francs hom ' who is amerced at a higher rate than other men be any other than the ' liberalis homo qui habet consuetiidines suas ' of the 'Instituta Cnuti', the 'king's thane who has his soc' of Cnut's law, and the ' antecessor qui habebat socam et sacam et condemnationem ' of Domesday Book ? ^ But it is to the ' Leges Henrici ', which, ' if it has a plan at all, is a treatise on the law of jurisdiction, a treatise on " soke " ',^ that we chiefly look for some hint that ' sac and soc, toll and team, and infangthef ' belonged to every king's thane, and therefore to every baron, as such. Sure enough, we find near the beginning of the Leges (c. 9) this sentence : As to the soc of pleas, there is that which belongs properly and exclusively to the king's fisc ; there is that which it shares with others ; there is that which belongs to the sheriffs and royal baiUffs as comprised in their farms ; there is that which belongs to the barons who have soc and sac. ^ e. g. Edward the Confessor's writ confirming the liberties of the see of York : Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters, i, no. 10. Compare no. 22, and other charters of this king in Kemble and Birch.
- Domesday Book, ii. 116 il.
- Maitland, DonKsdarj Book and Beyond, p. 80.
