or wealth. A hide of land was considered sufficient to support a family; the Geþyncðo states; "And if a ceorl throve, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church and kitchen, bellhouse and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king's hail, then was he thenceforth of thegn-right worthy." This also applied to merchants, who "fared thrice over the wide sea by his own means." In the same way, a successful thegn might hope to become an earl. The increase in the number of thegns produced in time a subdivision of the order. There arose a class of king's thegns, corresponding to the earlier thegns, and a larger class of inferior thegns, some of them the thegns of bishops or of other thegns. A King's Thane is a Prince and a person of great importance, who answered to no-one but the king personally. He had special privileges and no one save the king in person had the right of jurisdiction over a King`s Thane, while by a law of Canute we learn that he paid a larger heriot than an ordinary thegn. The Median-Thegn the contemporary idea being shown by the Latin translation of the words as comes (compare "count"). The distinction between the ordinary Thanes and the King's Thanes, or those of the first class, has been defined by folklorist Sir George Laurence Gomme as "a Baron, or petty Prince, ruling under the Sovereign". This is analogous to the evolution of a warlord's henchman to vassal, one of Charlemagne's great companions. In Domesday Book, OE has become in the Latin form, but the word does not imply high status. Domesday Book lists the who hold lands directly from the king at the end of their respective counties, but the term became devalued, partly because there were so many thegns. Post-Conquest England After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, William the Conqueror replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy with Normans, who replaced the previous terminology with their own. Those previously known as thegns became barons. Runestones Although their exact role is unclear, the twelve senior thegns of the hundred played a part in the development of the English system of justice. Under a law of Aethelred they "seem to have acted as the judicial committee of the court for the purposes of accusation. This indicates some connection with the modern jury trial. During the later part of the