In the last decade there has been a radical reassessment of Domesday Book and the picture that it affords of pre-Conquest society. Although there is still debate on the mechanisms of the Norman settlement, it is now generally accepted that pre-Conquest society was as hierarchical as its counterpart in 1086. At its apex stood the king's thegn who held bookland and attended on the king in person with his men and resources, and he in turn enjoyed the renders and services of numerous tenants and free holders. In the law codes the king's thegn is sharply distinguished from the median thegn and free man, but in Domesday there is no systematic record of status. Nevertheless, criteria have been identified to discriminate one from the other in the Survey. Explicit references to king's thegns can be misleading: it is now clear that those of 1086 and their TRE predecessors were minor officials who held loanland. The right to sake and soke is a surer indicator, for the liberty was the essence of bookland.

A thegn or thane was an attendant, servant, retainer, or official. From the first, however, it had a military significance, and its usual Latin translation was miles, meaning soldier, although minister was often used. It is only used once in the laws before the time of Aethelstan (c. 895-940), but more frequently in the charters but it has no connection with the German dienen, to serve. The nobility of pre-Conquest England was ranked according to the heriot they paid in the following descending order: earl, king's thegn, median thegn. The charter granting a market to Wolverhampton, 985 AD, is attested by Etherald, King of the Angles, the archbishops of Canterbury and of York, eight bishops, eight ealdormen, two abbots, and ten king's thegns, in that order. Domesday lists the thegns who hold lands directly of the king at the end of their respective counties, so the word thane was used in Scotland until the 15th century, to describe a hereditary non-military tenant of the crown.

King's Thegns of Greater Domesday: Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Hertfordshire A-E, F-M, N-Z

King's Thegns of Little Domesday & Southeast England: Berkshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex: A-E, F-M, N-Z

King's Thegns of Domesday with no sucessor: Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire, Huntingdonshire, Yorkshire A-Z

King's Thegns of Domesday: the West Country (Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire). n/a

Anglo-Norman settlement in Ireland began around 1169, when men from South Wales took service with, and received rewards from, the Irish king of Leinster. In 1171 Henry II crossed to Ireland and imposed royal control upon what was developing into a process of conquest. From then on, the patronage of English kings, and grants made in turn by the major beneficiaries of their patronage, largely determined the composition of the settler elite. Some of the greatest proprietors in Ireland, headed by the Marshal earls of Pembroke/lords of Leinster and their Successor, were also major landowners in England and Wales. Religious houses from Galloway to the English west country acquired Irish estates and daughter houses: Bath Abbey was still managing property in Waterford in the fifteenth century. This web of proprietorship was a crucial aspect of the relationship between Ireland and Britain.