The Nature of Thegns

The second element of the Farthing surname was originally the word thegn or thane, a title often found on ancient rune stones in Scandinavia.

Else Roesdahl tells us in her book The Vikings, that the word "thegn" in Viking Age Denmark signified a specific occupation within a centrally administered military hierarchy.

According to Brigit Sawyer in her article Appendix: the evidence of Scandinavian runic inscriptions in the book The Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway, edited by Alexander R. Rumble, a thegn was an older man, a settled landowner that had once been a young, active warrior, but had attained a special status as a royal agent.

Frank Barlow tells us in his book Edward the Confessor:

"Whatever emphasis be put on the more miscellaneous obligations, it cannot be doubted that the thegn's basic duty was military."...and..."Without this class of noble servants, endowed with land and commended to the King, the kingdom could not have been governed." ...and..."Thegns would be horsemen from childhood, and no man of that rank walked any distance."

From Anglo-Saxon Writs, by F. E. Harmer,
pages 52-3:

"In the eleventh century thegns were persons of high rank, some under the immediate lordship of the king, some under the lordship of other persons. F. M. Stenton observes that, on the eve of the Conquest, men of this rank 'played an essential part in the maintenance of public order'; that they 'administered law in the courts of shire and hundred', and 'as lords of what we can only call manors' they 'governed innumerable villages'; that they were 'responsible for the military service, as for the other public burdens due by custom from the men of their estates', and that in addition 'they were themselves required to serve in the army when summoned by the king or their immediate lord'. The thegns of the shire are sometimes mentioned as acting collectively as witnesses to legal transactions;". "They were the principal suitors to the shire court."

R. I. Page writes in his book Runes: A thegn was an "official, an older man who was officer to a king or a nobleman."

In The World of the Vikings, Oleklindt-Jensen tells us that in Scandinavia, a thegn was a chieftain.

From The Vikings, edited by John D. Clare, page 24:

"The sagas tell us when a Viking leader needed to raise an army, he sent out a messenger carrying an iron arrow. In Norway and Denmark this messenger traveled around skipreitha (ship districts), each of which was commanded by a thegn (war leader). Every man who saw the arrow, including thralls, had to join the local war leader's ship within five days, combed, washed, and fed - or be outlawed. A widow had to send her male servants. In theory, therefore, a Viking army was made up of troop levies (men who had been drafted), each led by a thegn or gothi."

From Saxon, Viking and Norman, by Terence Wise, page 5:

"The thegn was an originally separate class, probably originating from the body guard of the great leaders; that is what had been a companion in arms in the earlier war bands became a thegn in the age of settlement."...and..."Thus a thegn, a servant of the king, with or without ancient family, and holding his office by royal commission, could become a member of the Woden-born aristocracy."

A Few Words About the Normans

From Heraldry, Ancestry and Titles, Questions and Answers, by L. G. Pine,
page 61:

"69. Why are so many people keen to have Norman blood?"
"A good point because it does seem strange to want to come from a set of hoodlums, whose only difference from Hitler's Nazis was that they were more successful."

The Normans, in fact, made Hitler's Brown Shirts look like a troop of Boy Scouts.

From England in the Twelfth Century, edited by Daniel Williams,
page 242:

"According to William of Malmesbury:
'The Normans...are a race inured to war and can hardly live without it; formidable in attacking their enemies and when force fails they resort to cunning or corrupt by bribery...they envy their equals, they wish to vie with their superiors...They are faithful to their lords unless a slight offence gives them excuse for treachery. They weigh treachery by its chance of success...'
Hence, according to Orderic Vitalis, the necessity for firm and powerful royal authority:
'If the Normans are disciplined under a just and firm rule they are men of great valour...But without such rule they tear each other to pieces and destroy themselves, for they hanker after rebellion, cherish sedition and are ready for any treachery. So they need to be restrained by the severe penalties of law and forced by the curb of discipline to keep to the path of justice.' "

Both of these writers, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis, were strangely enough of mixed Anglo-Norman parentage.

From In Search of England, Journeys into the English Past, by Michael Wood,
page 15:

"A remarkable new study by Katharine Keats-Rohan has shown that the gulf between the one-and-a-half million Anglo-Saxons and the twenty or thirty thousand Normans was far greater than historians had ever suspected. Surprisingly, in the hundred years or so after the Conquest, there was virtually no intermarriage between the Norman aristocracy and the English."...and..."In reality, it would appear that the Normans considered themselves to be socially and ethnically superior, and practiced a form of social separation which Dr Keats-Rohan considers 'a medieval forerunner of apartheid'."

And yet there is evidence that the Farthegn family, especially in Somersetshire, had become so intertwined with the Normans that intermarriage must have occurred.
Previous Page......Next Page