The status of thegn in late Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

This article considers how the term ‘thegn’ was used in tenth- and eleventh-century England. Although commonly thought to indicate members of a face-to-face service aristocracy with specific attributes, it has resisted close definition. Examination of references to anonymous thegns in administrative and legal texts suggests that the people meant were, increasingly, quite ordinary landowners. This casts Archbishop Wulfstan's much-quoted stipulations on thegnship in a new light. The application of OE þegn to landowners in general hints at a deeper realignment of social boundaries in a newly expanded kingdom.