THANE, in Anglo-Saxon thegn, from thegnian, or thenian, "to serve," the same word with the modem Germen dienen, is frequently, in conformity with this origin, translated minister in the Latin charters of the Anglo-Saxon period. In other cases its equivalent Is miles, or ildelis miles. So king Alfred, in his translation of Bede's Eccle siastical History,' renders the king's minister, the king's thane, and uses thane wherever Bede has miles. The exact meaning of the term when employed as a title of honour is involved in considerable obscurity : the rank or dignity which it denoted was possibly not the same at different times, and there were also thanes of more than one kind. After the Conquest thanes (thaini or taini) are frequently classed with barons (barones): in the laws of Henry I., the two words are apparently used as synonymous; and where the Saxon Chronicler has thanes (thegenas), the Latin annalists have commonly barones. The class of common or inferior thanes seems to have answered nearly to that of the barones minores, or landed gentry. One of the few things that are tolerably certain with regard to the rank of a thane is, that it implied the possession of a certain amount of landed property. Such a qualification indeed seems in certain circumstances to have conferred the dignity of thane. One of the laws of Athelstanc declares that if a ccorl (or commoner) shall have obtained five hides of land in full property, with a church, a kitehen, a bell-house, a hurghate seat (or office of magistrate in a burgh), and a station in the king's hall (the meaning of which last expression is doubtful), he shall henceforth be a thane by right. Five hides of land was probably the amount demanded
even for a thane of the highest order; although it appears from Domes day-Book that this was also the quantity which made the owner a miles, or liable to be called out on the king's military service. Many lands are mentioned in Domesday-Book as thane-lands (terra, tainorum); and it is probable that the dignity, like the oldest of the Norman baronies, was sometimes attached to a particular estate. Thanes were among the members of the Saxon Witenagemot, or parliament. The principal facts connected with, this dignity in England have been collected by Mr. Sharon Turner, in his' History of the Anglo-Saxons, 8vo., London, 1823, vol. iii.; by Sir Francis Palgrave, in his Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth,' 4to., 1832, and by Mr. J. M. Kernble in his' Saxons in England,' 1849.
There is little mention of the thanes in England after the time of Henry H.; but Lord Hailes has shown (` Annals,' i. 28) that in Scot land thane was a recognised title down to the end of the 15th century : the ' Chartulary of Moray' mentions a thane of Cawdor in 1492. It appears from the first to have implied in Scotland a higher dignity than in England, and to have been for the most synonymous with earl, which was a title generally annexed to the territory of a whole county.