Every year, however, made for definition; and custom pointed with increasing authority towards 100s. per knight’s fee, and £100 for a barony. Two entries on the Pipe Roll of 10 Richard I. amusingly illustrate the unsettled practice. A sum of £100 is described as a “reasonable relief” for a barony, and immediately this entry is stultified by a second entry of a considerable additional payment by way of “fine” to induce the king to accept the sum his own roll had just declared “reasonable.”[355] John was more openly regardless of reason. The Pipe Roll of 1202 shows how an unfortunate heir failed to get his heritage until he paid 300 marks, with the promise of an annual “acceptable present” to the king.[356] ----- Footnote 355: Madox, I. 316. Footnote 356: Madox, I. 317. ----- If John could ask so much, what prevented him asking more? He might name a prohibitive price, and so defeat the hereditability of fiefs altogether. Such arbitrary exactions must end, so the barons were determined in 1215; custom must be defined, so as to prevail henceforth against royal discretion. The first demand of the Articles of the Barons is, “that heirs of full age shall have their heritage by the ancient relief to be set forth in the Charter.” Here it is, then, duly set forth and defined in chapter 2 of Magna Carta as £100 for an "earl’s barony," £100 for "a baron’s barony," 100s. for a knight’s fee, and a proportional part of 100s. for every fraction of a knight’s fee. This clause produced the desired effect. These rates were strictly observed by the exchequer of Henry III., as we know from the Pipe Rolls of his reign. Thus, when a certain William Pantoll was charged with £100 for his relief on the mistaken supposition that he held a “barony,” he protested that he held only five knight’s fees, and got off with the payment of £25.[357] The relief of a barony was subsequently reduced from £100 to 100 marks. The date of this change, if we may rely on Madox,[358] lies between the twenty-first and thirty-fifth years of Edward I.[359] ----- Footnote 357: _Ibid._, I. 318. Footnote 358: _Ibid._, I. 321. Footnote 359: The first of the long series of charters and confirmations which contains it seems to be the _Inspeximus_ of 10th October, 1297, which in all probability merely recognized officially a rule long demanded as simple justice by the barons and public opinion. (See Madox, I. 318, Pollock and Maitland, I. 289, and Bémont, _Chartes_, p. 47.) ----- Apparently all who paid reliefs to the king were mulcted in a further payment (calculated at 9 per cent. of the relief) in name of "Queen’s Gold," a contribution to the private purse of the Queen Consort, and collected by an official specially representing her at the exchequer.[360] ----- Footnote 360: See note by editors of _Dialogus_, p. 238. The Petition of the Barons in 1258 (_Sel. Charters_, 382) protested against this, and the practice was discontinued.