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Thane (/ˈθeɪn/;Scottish Gaelic:taidhn)[1] was the title given to a local royal official inmedieval easternScotland, equivalent in rank to the son of anearl,[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 alaird, 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 aprovincial assembly ofFife between 1128 and 1136, at which one attendee is described as the thane ofFalkland.[4] A further eleven thanes are recorded over the course of the rest of the 12th century, attached to estates fromEast Lothian toMoray, all of which were at the time under the control of theKing 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, includingDunning andStrowan, which both lay within theEarldom 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]
Thethane was introduced in the reign ofDavid I (reigned 1124–1153), an Anglophile, to replace theGaelictòiseach (meaningleader, and with which the termTaoiseach shares an origin). In Scotland at that timetoshach designated a deputy to amormaer, controlling a particular portion of a mormaerdom on the mormaer's behalf. The Englishthegn was a more general term, simply referring to landholders of widely varying importance.[9] Having introducedearl to describe mormaers, David usedthane to describe toshachs.[citation needed]
Functionally, the thane was a territorial administrator, acting under a territorial earl (the latter resembling aSaxon 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 ofAlexander III in 1286, thanes differed from their tosach forebears by holding their position as afeudal grant from the crown, rather than the almost independent status held by a tosach. Thanes consequently resembled Englishbarons, but with greater judicial and administrative authority which extended beyond the lands they directly held. In later centuries, the termthanes dropped out of use in favour ofbaron, but described as havingregality, a term used to describe both the thanes' powers, and the greater powers of the territorial earl.[citation needed]
InWilliam Shakespeare'sMacbeth (1606), the characterMacbeth holds the title "Thane ofGlamis", and later, "Thane of Cawdor".[11]The historicalKing Macbeth fought a Thane of Cawdor who died in battle, but he did not thereby acquire the title himself.[citation needed] The characterMacduff is Thane ofFife.
The2nd Earl of Cawdor wrote a history of the Thanes of Cawdor, in 1742, published in 1859.[12]
In the video gameThe 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 localJarl. The title allows the player to purchase land within various holds, such as Whiterun or Falkreath.[13]
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.