“Scutagium,” or “shield-money,” often means, it is true, a specific sum of so much per knight’s fee (normally twenty shillings) accepted by the King in lieu of the personal service in his army due by his tenants _in capite_. Thus it is, as Dr. Stubbs explains, “an honourable commutation for personal service”;[125] but it is also loosely used[126] to denote any exaction whatsoever assessed on a feudal basis (that is, taken exclusively from holders of fiefs) irrespective of the occasion of its levy. Thus, money taken in name of one of the three feudal _aids_ is sometimes described as a scutage; and other instances might be cited. ----- Footnote 125: Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, I. 632. Footnote 126: As was long ago pointed out by Madox, I. 619. ----- Again, learned opinion tends towards the belief that Henry II. made no radical or startling alteration. Professor Freeman, Dr. Stubbs, and their adherents familiarized a bygone generation of historians with the view that one of Henry’s most important reforms was to allow his Crown tenants at their discretion to substitute payments in money for the old obligation of personal service in the field—this option being granted to ecclesiastics in 1156, and to lay barons in 1159. Such a theory had _a priori_ much to recommend it. A measure of this nature, while giving volume and elasticity to the resources of the Crown, was calculated subtly to undermine the basis of the feudal tie; but Henry, farseeing statesman as he was, could not discard the ideals of his own generation. No evidence that he made any sweeping change is forthcoming. His grandfather, Henry I., is shown by the evidence of extant charters to have accepted money in place of the services of knights _when it suited him_ (notably from church fiefs in 1109),[127] and there is no evidence (direct or indirect) to show that the grandson accepted such commutation _when it did not suit him_. The conclusions formulated, with his usual energy, by Mr. J. Horace Round, lie implicitly in the examples from the _Pipe Rolls_ stored in the great work of Madox. From these it would appear that the procedure of the Exchequer of the great Angevin and his two sons might be explained in some such propositions as these: ----- Footnote 127: See Round, _Feudal England_, p. 268. ----- (_a_) The option to convert service into scutage lay with the Crown, and not with the tenants, either individually or as a body. When the King summoned his feudal army no baron could (as Professor Freeman would have us believe) simply stay away under obligation of paying a small fixed sum to the Exchequer. On the contrary, Henry and his sons jealously preserved the right to insist on _personal_ service whenever it suited them; even efficient substitutes were not always accepted, much less money payments.