Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth CenturiesRound, John Horace
History
Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Round, John Horace
Domesday book; Feudalism -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154; Normans -- Great Britain
Again, the (MS.) Cartulary of St Evroul contains a confirmation by
Randulf, Earl of Chester (1121-29) of his predecessor (d. 1120) Earl
Richard's benefaction, 'liberam et quietam ab _escuagio_', etc., etc.
The list of the Abbot of Peterborough's knights (see p. 131) is a
further illustration of knight-service _temp._ Henry I, while the
entry as to Vivian, who was enfeoffed by Abbot Turold: 'servit pro
milite _cum auxilio_' (_Chron. Petrob._, p. 175), must refer to the
somewhat obscure 'auxilium militum' of the period. So also, it would
seem, must the curious charter of Eustace, Count of Boulogne,[126]
in which he speaks of his knights serving: 'sive _in nummis_, sive
in exercitu, sive in guarda', under Henry I. Most important of all,
however, is a passage on which I have lighted since this essay first
appeared. In reading through the letters of Herbert (Losinga), Bishop
of Norwich (d. 1119), I found this appeal to the Bishop of Salisbury,
in the king's absence from England:
In terris meis exiguntur quinquaginta libræ pro placitis, cum
earundem terrarum mei homines nec in responsionem nec in facto
peccaverint.[127] Item _pro militibus sexaginta libræ_ quos [?
quas] tanto difficilius cogor reddere, quanto annis præteritis
mea substantia gravius attenuata est (Ed. Giles, p. 51).
The sum is that to which the Ely contribution is reduced by the above
charter, and the death of the writer in 1119 proves the early date of
the payment.
Indeed, a little consideration will show that payment in lieu of
military service, which was the essential principle of scutage,
could be no new thing. The two forms which this payment might
assume--payment to a substitute, or payment to the crown--both appear
in Domesday as applicable to the fyrd; the former is found in the
'Customs' of Berkshire, the latter in other passages. From the very
commencement of knight service, the principle must have prevailed;
for the 'baron' who had not enfeoffed knights enough to discharge his
_servitium debitum_, must always have hired substitutes to the amount
of the balance. Nor is this a matter of supposition: we know as a
fact, from the _Abingdon Chronicle_ and the _Ely History_, that under
William I knights were so hired.[128] Here it should be noted, as a
suggestive fact, that the 'forty days' of military service, though
bearing no direct proportion either to the week or to the month, do so
to the marc and to the pound. The former represents 4d, and the
latter 6d, for each day of the military service.[129] It may fairly
be assumed that this normal 'scutage' would be based on the estimated
cost of substitutes paid direct. Thus the only change involved would
be that the tenant would make his payments not to substitutes, but to
the crown instead.
There is a valuable entry bearing on this point in the roll of 8 Henry
II (p. 53). We there read:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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