Paladin Took

The farmer who became Thain

Paladin was born in T.A. 2933 (S.R. 1333), the son of Adalgrim Took and grandson of Hildigrim, a younger son of the Old Took. He farmed at Whitwell near Tuckborough, married Eglantine Banks, and had three daughters, Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca, before his only son Peregrin was born in 2990. His sister Esmeralda married Saradoc Brandybuck and was the mother of Merry. Paladin had no expectation of the Thainship; but Thain Ferumbras III, his cousin, died unmarried and childless in S.R. 1415, and the office passed to Paladin as the nearest male heir. He was the thirty-first Thain and the first of a new line of the Took family.

The Tookland holds out

Paladin's moment came in the year of the Troubles. When Lotho Sackville-Baggins proclaimed himself Chief and filled the Shire with hired Men, the Thain refused to have anything to do with him. The Tooks shut themselves into the Great Smials, the deep tunnels of the Green Hills, and when the ruffians came to the Tookland the hobbits shot three of them and drove the rest out. Thereafter the Men kept a watch on the district and would let no one in or out, but they never took it, and the Tookland remained the one part of the Shire where Lotho's rules did not run. When Pippin rode in on the night of 2 November 3019, in the livery of Gondor, Paladin's hobbits were ready, and he sent a hundred of them to the Battle of Bywater the next morning.

Later years

Paladin remained Thain for nearly twenty years after the Scouring and died in S.R. 1434, aged a hundred and one. Peregrin succeeded him, and in the same year the King named the Thain a Counsellor of the North-kingdom. Paladin's daughter Pervinca and her sisters appear in the family tree; his line through Pippin and Faramir Took continued at the Great Smials.

Died in S.R. 1434 and was succeeded as Thain by his son Peregrin.