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
But, for our present purpose, we must confine ourselves to the scutage
proper. The passage on which I would specially dwell is the entry
on the roll in which the _custos_ of the archbishopric of Canterbury
'reddit compotum de cxiii. li. de Militibus de Archiepiscopatu de ii.
Exercitibus' (p. 109).[166] In the first place, we have here, surely,
witness to the _two_ Welsh campaigns of this year, which Mr
Eyton adopts, following Mr Bridgeman,[167] but which Miss Norgate
rejects.[168] Secondly, this sum resolves itself, on analysis,
into two constituents of 84-3/4 marcs each. Now the return for the
archbishopric the following year is: 'Archiepiscopus habet iiij^{xx.}
et iiij^{or.} et dimidium et quartam partem feffatos.'[169] Having set
forth this exact corroboration, I will briefly trace the _servitium_
of the See. In 1156 and 1159 it pays no scutage when the other church
fiefs do, but within six months of Theobald's death it pays to the
scutage of 1161 on a _servitium_ of sixty knights, being then in the
hands of the crown. Under Becket, in 1162, it is once more omitted;
but in 1165 it again pays, as we have seen, and now not on sixty
knights but on 84-3/4. In 1168 it contributes, on the same amount, to
the _auxilium_, and in 1172, but the latter year is the first in which
the _recognoscit_ formula is employed, enabling us to determine that,
as in 1161, the _servitium debitum_ was sixty knights.
The typical difference between these sixty knights and the 84-3/4
actually enfeoffed will serve to illustrate the point on which I
insist throughout. Had the fee been held by its tenant, he would
have raised 84-3/4 marcs, paid sixty to the crown, and kept 24-3/4 for
himself.[170] But when a _custos_ held the fief, he could keep
nothing back, and therefore paid over the whole. We have, I think, an
illustration of the same kind in the payment (p. 202, note 76) by the
_custos_ of the Romare fief, 'de noviter feffatis' (_noviter_, be it
observed not yet _de novo_).
Having brought the levies down to 1165, I hope it has now been made
clear that the officials of the exchequer were well aware of the
amount of _servitium debitum_ from every fief, the levies being always
based on the said amount. Swereford, therefore, was quite mistaken in
the inference he drew from the inquest of 1166:[171] indeed, his words
prove that he completely misunderstood the problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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