On May 26, 1214, John had issued writs for the collection of a scutage of three marks per fee from all tenants-in-chief, royal demesnes, vacant bishoprics, lands in royal wardship, and escheats, except those fees which were personally represented in the army in Poitou; on these the scutage was, as usual, to be remitted by royal warrant.[926] Those northern barons who had refused to serve now refused to pay. They adhered to their contention that they were by their tenure exempt from the obligation to foreign service, and they argued that, in consequence, they were also exempt from the obligation to payment in substitution for such service.[927] Whether they claimed this double exemption as a privilege peculiar to themselves, or as common to the whole baronage, is not quite clear. In either case the claim would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove. There is nothing to indicate that the fiefs in northern England had been originally granted on different conditions from those in the south. On the other hand, there are, indeed, some slight indications of the possible existence in some quarters, in the days of both Richard and Henry, of a theory that the obligation to foreign service--and therefore to payment of scutage for a foreign war--did not form part of the regular obligations of military tenure; in other words, that tenants-in-chivalry were not legally bound to serve in, or to pay for, any war save one of defence. But no general attempt had ever been made even to formulate such a theory, far less to carry it out to its logical consequences; and it is obvious that those consequences would have made it practically impossible for the kings of England to carry on any continental warfare at all. When John in reply to the northern recalcitrants insisted that “it always used to be so done”--that is, foreign service had been rendered or scutage paid in its stead--in his father’s and brother’s days,[928] he was unquestionably right; and he might have added that it had also been so done, over and over again, in the early years of his own reign. The protest of the northern barons seems to have been made to him in a personal meeting very soon after his return to England; we are told that “the matter would have gone further, had it not been checked by the presence of the legate.” It seems indeed to have gone further notwithstanding that obstacle, for the same chronicler adds: “There was brought forth a certain charter of liberties given to the English by Henry I., which the said barons asked the king to confirm.”[929] [Sidenote: 1213]