The barons, in October, 1255, if Matthew Paris has not fallen into error, considered that the provisions of chapters 12 and 14 of John’s Magna Carta were still in force, although they had been omitted in the reissues of Henry III. When the king asked a liberal aid in furtherance of his scheme for securing the crown of Sicily for his son Edmund, those present at the Council deliberately refused, on the ground that some of their peers had not been summoned “according to the tenor of Magna Carta.” This incident illustrates the extreme constitutional importance rightly attached by the barons to the rigid observance by the Crown of the established usage relative to the convening of Parliament.[516] ----- Footnote 516: See M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, V. 520. His words are: “_Et responsum fuit quod omnes tunc temporis non fuerunt juxta tenorem magnae cartae suae vocati, et ideo sine paribus suis tunc absentibus nullum voluerunt tunc responsum dare_.” Matthew, however, probably improved his story in the telling, adding local colour from the only version of the charter known to him—namely, that spurious copy he had incorporated in his own history. He clearly knew nothing of the essential differences between the charters of John and of Henry. The barons in 1255 may, or may not, have been equally ignorant. ----- CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Nos non concedemus de cetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis, nisi ad corpus suum redimendum, et ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem, et ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam, et ad hec non fiat nisi racionabile auxilium. We will not for the future grant to any one licence to take an aid from his own free tenants, except to ransom his body, to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and on each of these occasions there shall be levied only a reasonable aid. This chapter confers on the tenants of mesne lords protection similar to that already conferred on Crown tenants: sums of money are no longer to be extorted from them arbitrarily by their lords.[517] Different machinery, however, had here to be adopted, since the expedient relied on in chapter 12 (“the common consent of the realm”) was clearly inapplicable. ----- Footnote 517: The chapter is, therefore, on the one hand a necessary supplement of cc. 12 and 14, while on the other it is merely a particular application of the general principle enunciated in c. 60, which extended to sub-tenants all the benefits secured to Crown tenants by previous chapters. -----