The messengers between Godwin and the King would seem, by the general sense of the chronicles, to have been certain thegns acting as mediators.
At these words, which for the first time apprised the English leaders that their king and kingdom were under the awful ban of excommunication, the thegns and abbots gazed on each other aghast.
At that moment Gurth and Leofwine, and those thegns who commanded counties, were thronging round their chief for instructions.
Thegns and warriors, ye have no castles but your breasts of mail.
Nevertheless, Canute allowed bishops, abbots, and thegns to hunt in his woods--a privilege restored by Henry III.
England and bade his bishops and his abbots and all his thegns that they should come to his council on Candlemas Day (2 February) at Gloucester to meet him, and so they did.
And then there were with him all the mighty men over all England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights.
He had earls in his bonds who had done against his will; bishops he put away from their bishoprics, and abbots from their abbeys, and thegns he put in prison, and at last he spared not his own brother Odo.
And they brought him before the king, and the king gave him the archbishopric, and all the bishops accepted him, but the monks and earls and almost all the thegns that were there withstood him.
The Thegns of inferior lords, of Bishops and Ealdormen, formed a secondary class.
Then one of the Thegns speaks; “Neither on that folk Shall the Thanes twit me That I from this host Away would go To seek my home, Now mine Elder lieth Hewn down in battle; To me is that harm most; He was both my kinsman And my lord.
One critic good-humouredly exclaims, "We have a full attendance of thegns and cnehts, but we should have liked much better our old friends and approved good masters thanes and knights.
Perhaps the forefathers of one-fourth of our Anglo-Saxon thegns held the plough, or followed some craft mechanical.
Perhaps the Earl was not, in his own mind, averse from returning William's display of power by some evidence of his own military skill, and the valour of the Saxon thegns in his train.
Then, turning to each of the thegns successively he gave to each his post and his duty; and that done, converse grew more general.
None spoke against the Earl's proposal, though the two youngerthegns misliked it much.
This circumstance the insurgent thegns received as a good omen; and, having already agreed on the deputation, about a score of the principal thegns of the north went sedately towards the hostile lines.
I think we have here a rational explanation of the action of Hengest and the other thegns of Hnaef, in following the slayer of their lord.
He thinks that it is "almost incomprehensible" that Hengest should make terms with Finn, if he had really reduced Finn and his thegnsto such a degree of helplessness as the words of the Episode state.
Were the thegns asked to sacrifice theirs, and go naked into the next fight in honour of their lord?
We cannot read the description without being reminded of the words of the thegns in praise of the dead Beowulf.
Wearied with six battles, the army of Wessex broke up, and the thegnssadly bore King Aethelred home, to bury him at Wimborne.
It was said that Edward had once promised to use his influence in his Norman cousin's favour, but it is certain that on his death-bed he recommended Harold to the assembled thegns and bishops.
Eadgar kept so many of them about his person that he even provoked the thegns of Wessex to murmuring.
It was at the head of his thegns and this reorganized fyrd that Alfred smote the Danes when they dared to invade his realm in his later years.
The tale is well known how, when Eadwig at a high feast had retired betimes to his wife's chamber, Oda and another bishop followed him and dragged him back by force to the board where the thegns were feasting.
The thegns served the king in bower and hall, and had to follow him in person whenever he took the field, as the old gesiths had followed the leaders of the first Saxon war-bands.
After satisfying himself as to the chances of a sudden attack, he had returned to Athelney and sent messengers to the thegns and ealdormen of neighboring shires, giving them a tryst for the second week in May.
The kings therefore had to rely more and more upon their thegns, who in turn had thegns of their own whom they could bring with them; and thus was formed an army ready for military service in any part of the kingdom.
How theseThegns cultivated their lands is a question to which there is no certain answer.
Marching swiftly northwards with his house-carls and the thegns who joined him on the way, he hastened to their succour.
This moot was still attended by the freemen of the shire though the thegns were more numerous and the simple freemen less numerous than they had once been.
The members of the Witenagemot had attended because they were officially connected with the king, being ealdormen or bishops or thegns serving in some way under him.
Its principal feature was the hall, in which the whole family with the guests and the thegns of the lord met for their meals.
Even when ealdormen, bishops, and thegns met in the Witenagemot they could not speak in the name of the nation.
It has been supposed by some writers that the Thegns employed bondmen from the earliest times of the conquest.
This hundred-moot was held once a month, and was attended by four men and the reeve from every township, and also by the Eorls and Thegns living in the hundred.
Very early thesethegns were rewarded by grants of land on condition of continuing military service.
Then upon the morrow the king’s thegns whom he had left behind him heard that the king was slain: then rode they thither, and Osric his ealdorman, and Wiferth his thegn, and the men whom he had previously left behind.
God’s martyr was taken away by the thegns to the house of a poor man.
Then the king demanded all the thegns whom the earls before had; and they granted them all into his hands.
The thegns therefore held him, and one drew him to the right to himself, as though he wished to kiss him, while another roughly seized his left hand and wounded him.
The bench on which the three worthy thegns are seated is adorned with two sculptures of formidable-looking animals.
There were king's thegns and lesser thegns; the distinction being apparently regulated by the amount of land which they possessed.
The woodcut appears to represent three thegns celebrating a feast by quaffing ale from their drinking-horns.
All that is said of them seems to indicate that their position was much the same as that of the thegns in early Teutonic courts.
We need scarcely doubt therefore that Beowulf truly reflects the spirit of the times when it makes one of the Danish king's thegns compose a poem on the hero's exploit immediately after the event.
Among the thegns who witnessed his charters, Danes and Saxons continue to appear in but slightly changed ratio till the close of the reign.
Ordinarily, the thegns who witnessed royal grants may be taken to have been warriors or officials connected with the royal court.
The Saxon thegnsreceived this speech with wild acclaim.
Two South Saxons thegns expelled him for a time, and made themselves masters of the country.
Tostig bought this land from the church of Malmesbury for three lives':--in this there is nothing strange; leases for three lives granted by churches to thegns have been common.
Will he wish to do so, if three generations of thegns or knights have faithfully served the church?
Many of the king's thegnswere able to give or sell the lands that they held, 'to go to whatever lord they pleased[665].
And yet, though this be so and though Oswald's thegns will in some sense or another be holding book-land, we may be quite certain that should one of them be outlawed the bishop will claim the land.
But already the shire thegns have been letting their haws at a rent and probably have been letting them to craftsmen and traders.
These thegns had 'knights' who seem to have been in some sort inferior members of the gild and to have been bound by its rules[755].
Thus the abbot seems to have had the benefit of that forfeiture which his thegns incurred by espousing the cause of Harold.
We must wait for a later age before we shall find the kings freely booking lands to their thegns without any allusion to ecclesiastical purposes.
Proud of that first occasion, since his return, to do homage to him with whose cause that of England against the stranger was bound, all truly English at heart amongst the thegns of the land swelled his retinue.
Hereric and Godric were to fight in company with the thegns and their followers from the east of Derwent.
Nearly all the other Bernician thegns came into Bambrough and promised obedience.
He assured Edwin that he had arrested at least thirty of Cuichelm's thegns and advisers.
The King took his seat in the great hall at Aldby, with his thegns on either side of him, unarmed except with the seax, or long knife, worn at the girdle on the right side.
Edwin was present, and before all the thegnsdeclared them to be niddring and unworthy companions.
He summoned the Deiran thegns to York, and acted so suspiciously, and with such insolence, that they refused his summons to join him with their men, and remained neutral, if not hostile.
At Bambrough he found that one of the Bernician thegns had taken all the sons of Ethelfrith and fled with them into the country of the Picts.
The other thegns and councillors spoke, generally to the same effect.
It was not long before the presence of Edwin and the great Deiran thegns at the court of Redwald reached the ears of Ethelfrith the Wild.
Thus we his enemies, the thegns of Deira, are not molested, though we must obey the King's summons to war.
Aldyth sighed, and withdrew at the one door, while the thegns most in Harold's confidence entered at the other.
Wondering, but mute, the twenty thegns followed him.
But the stake was too weighty, the suspense too keen, for that reverent delicacy in those around; and the thegns pressed on each other, and a murmur rose, which murmured the name of Harold.
The employment made so habitual a part of the serious education of youth, that the thegns smoothed their brows at the sight, and deemed the boy worthily occupied.
The King's thegns who got their position by fighting for the King came to be known as knights.
Free farmers who had sought protection from thegns in time of war now took them as their lords.
Then Thurkil the White stood up in the meeting and asked all the thegns to give his wife the lands unreservedly which her kinswoman had granted her, and they did so.
These included all the great earls, the majority of bishops, some abbots, and a number of thegns and clerics.
The thegns became a nobility which replaced the eorls.
Harold as his successor to the thegns and bishops who stood about his death-bed.
After much factious strife, and many stormy meetings of the Witan, Edward was murdered at Corfe in 978 by some thegns of the party of the queen-dowager.
Such was the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had followed Harold from York or joined him on his march.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "thegns" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
