I. _Points of difference between tenants-in-chief and under-tenants._ Tenants of mesne lords were in some respects better off than tenants of the king,[518] but in others their position was distinctly worse. Not only had they to satisfy the demands of their own lord for “aids,” but they generally found that part of every burden laid by the king upon that lord’s shoulders was transferred to theirs. In seeking to provide for under-tenants the protection of which they stood so much in need Magna Carta looked, not to the common council, but to the king. No mesne lord was to be allowed to compel his tenants to contribute to his necessities without obtaining a written licence from the Crown; and stringent rules forbade the issue of such licences except upon the usual three occasions. Contrast this procedure with that which affected Crown tenants. ----- Footnote 518: The exemptions enjoyed by them are explained under c. 43. ----- (1) While chapter 12 had spoken of “aids and scutages,” this one speaks of “aids” alone. The omission can be readily explained: a mesne lord in England had no right of private war, and was, as a logical consequence, debarred from demanding scutage upon his own initiative. He might, indeed, allocate upon his freeholders part of any scutage which the Crown had taken from him; but the great barons who framed the Charter had no intention to renounce so just a right. The restriction of this clause to “aids” was thus intentional. (2) It would have been absurd to require “the common counsel of the realm” to every aid paid by the freeholders of a manor. The embryo Parliament had no time for petty local affairs; and the present chapter makes no such suggestion. Some substitute had, however, to be found. A natural expedient would have been to compel the mesne lord who wished an aid to take “the common consent” of the freeholders of his manor, assembled for that purpose in their court baron, as in a local parliament. This course was sometimes followed. Henry Tracey, for example, in 1235 (although armed with a royal writ), convened his Devonshire knights and obtained their collective consent to an aid of 20s. per fee on the occasion of his daughter’s marriage.[519] No such obligation, however, had been placed upon mesne lords by Magna Carta, which had sought a practical substitute for “the common consent of the realm” in quite a different direction, as will be explained immediately. ----- Footnote 519: See Bracton’s _Notebook_, case 1146, cited by Pollock and Maitland, I. 331. -----