Frankpledge, earlier known as frith-borh (literally "peace-pledge"Smith (1857:230) notes: "The Anglo-Saxon term for the "view of frank-pledge" is "frith-borh" - literally "peace-pledge." The term "frith" became, by a very natural blunder, corrupted into "free;" and so (in the Norman French) the compound word was converted into Frank-pledge.