Note 67 — Chapter II
Reading edition
In “The Supplication of Beggars,” they are stated at 52,000. (See Fox’s Acts and Mon, ii. 280. edit. 1631–2, with the note.) The number may be exaggerated; but it will seem less extraordinary when it is remembered that one of the qualifications of a thegn or thane, a lower class of nobles, having some analogy to the barons of Norman times, was, that he should have five hides of his own land and a church. (See Turner’s Angl. Sax. ii. 265.)