Is it not possible to reconcile these divergent conclusions? Undoubtedly the Conqueror held himself bound by no fixed rules, but made exceptions where he pleased: some favoured foundations were exempt from all service whatsoever.[367] Yet, if he distributed estates at his own free will, he did not necessarily distribute them irrationally or at random. He demanded service of knights in round numbers, 5 or 10 or 20, as he saw cause, and in normal cases he was guided by some loose sense of proportion. Where there was no reason either for preferential treatment or for special severity, service would be roughly proportionate either to the area or to the value. This rule was William’s servant, not his master, and was made to yield to many exceptions, which would amply account for the existence in later days of knight’s fees varying from 2 hides to 14 hides, instead of the normal 5.[368] Each such fee, whatever its acreage or its rental, owed the service of one knight, and paid relief at 100s. ----- Footnote 367: _E.g._ Gloucester and Battle Abbeys: see Round, _ibid._, 299. Footnote 368: See Round, _Feudal England_, 294, and Pollock and Maitland, I. 235. ----- (2) _Baronia integra._ The word “barony” cannot be easily defined, on account of the many changes it has undergone.[369] A “barony” at the Norman Conquest differed in almost every respect from a “barony” at the present day. The word _baro_ was originally synonymous with _homo_, meaning, in feudal usage, a vassal of any lord. It soon became usual, however, to confine the word to king’s men; “_barones_” were thus identical with "crown tenants"—a considerable body at first; but a new distinction soon arose between the great men and the smaller men among their number (between _barones majores_ and _barones minores_). The latter were usually called knights (_milites_), while “baron” was reserved for the holder of an “honour.”[370] For determining what constituted an “honour,” however, it was impossible to lay down any absolute criterion. Mere size was not sufficient: a magnate once classed as a full “baron” might successfully claim to be only a “knight,” thus lightening some of his feudal burdens, for example this one of “reliefs.” Chapter 14 of Magna Carta helped to stereotype the division, since it stipulated that each _major baro_ should receive an individual writ of summons to the Council, leaving the _barones minores_ to be convened collectively through the sheriff. As the one point of certainty, where everything else was vague, these writs came to possess an exaggerated importance, and it was finally held (at a date long subsequent to Magna Carta) that the mere receipt of a special summons, if acted upon, made the recipient a baron, and entitled his heirs, in all time coming, to succeed him in what was fast hardening into a recognized title of dignity. The “barons” in 1215 knew nothing of all this; they desired merely to have the reliefs due by them taxed at a fixed rate.