If any of our earls or barons, or others holding of us in chief by military service shall have died, and at the time of his death his heir shall be of full age and owe “relief,” he shall have his inheritance on payment of the ancient relief, namely the heir or heirs of an earl, £100 for a whole earl’s barony; the heir or heirs of a baron, £100 for a whole barony; the heir or heirs of a knight, 100s. at most for a whole knight’s fee; and whoever owes less let him give less, according to the ancient custom of fiefs. All preliminaries concluded, the Charter at once attacked what was, in the barons’ eyes, the chief of John’s abuses, his arbitrary increase of feudal obligations. The Articles of the Barons, indeed, had plunged at once into this most crucial question without a word by way of pious phrases or legal formulae, such as were necessary in a regular Charter. I. _Assessment of Beliefs._ Each “incident” had its own special possibilities of abuse, and the Great Charter deals with each of these in turn. The present chapter defines the reliefs to be henceforth paid to John.[353] The vagueness of the sums at first was a natural corollary of the early doubts as to whether the hereditary principle was absolutely binding or not. The heir with title not yet recognized was keen to come to terms. The lord took as much as he could grind from the inexperience or timidity of the youthful heir; the heir tried to profit from the good nature or temporary embarrassments of the lord. All was vague; and such vagueness favoured the strongest or most wily. ----- Footnote 353: Cf. _supra_, p. 73. ----- A process of definition, however, was early at work; and progressed, though slowly. Public opinion set limits of variation, to go beyond which was considered unreasonable or even indecent. Some conception of a “reasonable relief” was evolved. Yet the criterion varied: the Crown might defy rules binding on others. Henry I., indeed, when bidding against duke Robert in 1099 for the throne showed himself willing, in words if not in practice, to accept the limits set by contemporary opinion. His Charter of Liberties promised that all reliefs should be _justa et legitima_—an elastic phrase no doubt, and one in after days liberally interpreted by the exchequer officials in their royal master’s favour. By the end of the twelfth century, when Glanvill wrote, the exact sums which could be taken by mesne lords had been fixed; although the Crown remained free to exact higher rates. _Baroniae capitales_, he tells us, were charged relief, not at a fixed rate, but at sums which varied _juxta voluntatem et misericordiam domini regis_.[354] ----- Footnote 354: