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Updated: May 19, 2025
In a word, thegnhood contained within itself the germ of that later feudalism which was to battle so fiercely with the Teutonic freedom out of which it grew. But the strife between the conquering tribes which at once followed on their conquest of Britain was to bring about changes even more momentous in the development of the English people.
Indeed, the possession of these things may have helped him into the lordship of the manor. Certainly, some of them are mentioned in early Anglo-Saxon days among the qualifications for thegnhood, and when the lord possessed these things, he claimed a monopoly; his tenants were bound to grind their corn at his mill, and so forth.
The proximate effect was that "the ancient lords of the soil, thus thrust down into the second rank, formed that great body of freeholders, the stout gentry and yeomanry of England, who were for so many ages the strength of the land." It was from this ancient thegnhood that the Puritan settlers of New England were mainly descended.
For the old thegnhood, which might have grown into such a caste, was pushed down into a secondary position, and the peerage which arose after the Conquest was something different from a noblesse. It was primarily a nobility of office rather than of rank or privilege.
The freeman "commended" himself to a lord who promised aid, and as the price of this shelter he surrendered his freehold to receive it back as a fief laden with conditions of military service. The principle of personal allegiance which was embodied in the very notion of thegnhood, itself tended to widen into a theory of general dependence.
The greater part of the higher nobility fell in battle or fled into exile, while the lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole of their lands or redeemed a portion by the surrender of the rest. We see the completeness of the confiscation in the vast estates which William was enabled to grant to his more powerful followers.
Freeman has pointed out the importance of the change by which, after the Norman Conquest, the Old-English nobility or thegnhood was pushed down into "a secondary place in the political and social scale." Of the far-reaching effects of this change upon the whole subsequent history of the English race I shall hereafter have occasion to speak.
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