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Thane ( /ˈθeɪn/ ; Scottish Gaelic : taidhn) [1] was the title given to a local royal official in medieval eastern Scotland, equivalent in rank to the son of an earl, [2] who was at the head of an administrative and socio-economic unit known as a thanedom or thanage.
[T]he "thane", though he later developed into a laird, was at first an officer, half royal servant and half landowner, who looked after a portion of the king's land.
— John Duncan Mackie, [3]
The earliest documentary record of a thane is in the written judgement of a land dispute settled at a provincial assembly of Fife between 1128 and 1136, at which one attendee is described as the thane of Falkland. [4] A further eleven thanes are recorded over the course of the rest of the 12th century, attached to estates from East Lothian to Moray, all of which were at the time under the control of the King of Alba. [5] From around the beginning of the 13th century a few thanes also start to be documented attached to estates under the control of earls, including Dunning and Strowan, which both lay within the Earldom of Strathearn. [6] A statute of 1221 explicitly allowed that some thanes could be responsible to an earl rather than the king, [7] though the overwhelming majority of thanes in the historical record were attached to lands that lay outside earldoms and were in royal hands. [8]
The thane was introduced in the reign of David I (reigned 1124–1153), an Anglophile, to replace the Gaelic tòiseach (meaning leader, and with which the term Taoiseach shares an origin). In Scotland at that time toshach designated a deputy to a mormaer, controlling a particular portion of a mormaerdom on the mormaer's behalf. The English thegn was a more general term, simply referring to landholders of widely varying importance. [9] Having introduced earl to describe mormaers, David used thane to describe toshachs.[ citation needed ]
Functionally, the thane was a territorial administrator, acting under a territorial earl (the latter resembling a Saxon ealdorman rather than the more superficial Norman earl), or royal steward. 12th century evidence makes it clear that the thane's key role was to collect revenue and services from the estates they administered, being permitted to keep some for themselves as "thane's right" (Latin : ius thani). [10] Though thanes often held land within the region they administered, this was coincidental; providing land tenure was simply the way of paying for their services, the location of their lands not being intrinsically linked to the authority they wielded in any particular region.[ citation needed ]
However, after the death of Alexander III in 1286, thanes differed from their tosach forebears by holding their position as a feudal grant from the crown, rather than the almost independent status held by a tosach. Thanes consequently resembled English barons, but with greater judicial and administrative authority which extended beyond the lands they directly held. In later centuries, the term thanes dropped out of use in favour of baron, but described as having regality , a term used to describe both the thanes' powers, and the greater powers of the territorial earl.[ citation needed ]
In William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), the character Macbeth holds the title "Thane of Glamis", and later, "Thane of Cawdor". [11] The historical King Macbeth fought a Thane of Cawdor who died in battle, but he did not thereby acquire the title himself.[ citation needed ] The character Macduff is Thane of Fife.
The 2nd Earl of Cawdor wrote a history of the Thanes of Cawdor, in 1742, published in 1859. [12]
In the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the player character is able to receive the honorary title of Thane of Whiterun (and other "holds") by completing quests for the local Jarl. The title allows the player to purchase land within various holds, such as Whiterun or Falkreath. [13]
Macbethad mac Findláech, nicknamed the Red King, was King of Scotland (Alba) from 1040 until his death. Little is known about Macbeth's early life, although he was the son of Findláech of Moray and may have been a grandson of Malcolm II, presumably through his daughter Donada. He became Mormaer (Earl) of Moray – a semi-autonomous province – in 1032, and was probably responsible for the death of the previous mormaer, Gille Coemgáin. He subsequently married Gille Coemgáin's widow, Gruoch, but they had no children together.
Earl is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word eorl, meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. After the Norman Conquest, it became the equivalent of the continental count. Alternative names for the rank equivalent to "earl" or "count" in the nobility structure are used in other countries, such as the hakushaku (伯爵) of the post-restoration Japanese Imperial era.
In later Anglo-Saxon England, 10th to 11th centuries, a thegn or thane was an aristocrat who owned substantial land in one or more counties. Thanes ranked at the third level in lay society, below the king and ealdormen. Thanage refers to the tenure by which lands were held by a thane as well as the rank.
In early medieval Scotland, a mormaer was the Gaelic name for a regional or provincial ruler, theoretically second only to the King of Scots, and the senior of a Toísech (chieftain). Mormaers were equivalent to English earls or Continental counts, and the term is often translated into English as 'earl'.
Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is a character and the heroic main antagonist in William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603–1607) that is loosely based on history. Macduff, a legendary hero, plays a pivotal role in the play: he suspects Macbeth of regicide and eventually kills Macbeth in the final act. He can be seen as the avenging hero who helps save Scotland from Macbeth's tyranny in the play.
Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne is a title in the Peerage of Scotland and the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The earl is also Chief of Clan Lyon.
The Earl of Fife or Mormaer of Fife was the ruler of the province of Fife in medieval Scotland, which encompassed the modern counties of Fife and Kinross. Due to their royal ancestry, the earls of Fife were the highest ranking nobles in the realm, and had the right to crown the king of Scots.
The Earl or Mormaer of Ross was the ruler of the province of Ross in northern Scotland.
Scottish Society in the High Middle Ages pertains to Scottish society roughly between 900 and 1286, a period roughly corresponding to the general historical era known as the High Middle Ages.
Cawdor Castle is a castle in the parish of Cawdor in Nairnshire, Scotland. It is built around a 15th-century tower house, with substantial additions in later centuries. Originally a property of the Calder family, it passed to the Campbells in the 16th century. It remains in Campbell ownership, and is now home to the Dowager Countess Cawdor, stepmother of Colin Campbell, 7th Earl Cawdor.
Formartine is a committee area in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This district extends north from the River Don to the River Ythan. It has a population of 36,478.
Thane of Cawdor is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. The current 7th Earl Cawdor, of Clan Campbell of Cawdor, is the 25th Thane of Cawdor.
Lord Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis and quickly the Thane of Cawdor, is the title character and main protagonist in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The character is loosely based on the historical king Macbeth of Scotland and is derived largely from the account in Holinshed's Chronicles (1577), a compilation of British history.
Alexander Leslie, Earl of Ross was a Scottish nobleman. Born between 1367 and 1382, he was the son of Walter Leslie, Lord of Ross and Euphemia I, Countess of Ross. In around 1394, or not later than 1398, he became Earl of Ross and sometime before 1398 he married Isabel Stewart, daughter of Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife who became Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany. They had one child, Euphemia. He died at Dingwall, Scotland on 8 May 1402.
Gowrie is a region in central Scotland and one of the original provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It covered the eastern part of what became Perthshire. It was located to the immediate east of Atholl, and originally included the area around Perth, though that was later detached as Perthia.
William de Moravia was the 5th Earl of Sutherland and chief of the Clan Sutherland, a Scottish clan of the Scottish Highlands. William, 5th Earl of Sutherland was a loyal supporter of David II of Scotland in the wars against England.
Sir John Lyon of Glamis was a Scottish nobleman who was Chamberlain of Scotland between 1377 and 1382. He is regarded as the progenitor of the Chiefs of Clan Lyon.
Thane of Calder was a title of nobility in the Kingdom of Scotland.
The Provinces of Scotland were the primary subdivisions of the early Kingdom of Alba, first recorded in the 10th century and probably developing from earlier Pictish territories. Provinces were led by a mormaer, the leader of the most powerful provincial kin-group, and had military, fiscal and judicial functions. Their high degree of local autonomy made them important regional powerbases for competing claimants to the throne of Alba.
This article collects the History of Nairn, Nairn is a town and Royal burgh in the Highland council area of Scotland. It is an ancient fishing port and market town around 17 miles (27 km) east of Inverness. It is the traditional county town of Nairnshire.
As we cannot name the first Celtic chieftain who consented to change his style of Toshach and his patriarchal sway for the title and stability of King's Thane of Cawdor, so it is impossible to fix the precise time when their ancient property and offices were acquired.