(_b_) If the individual wished to stay at home he required to make a special bargain to pay such fine as the King agreed to accept—and sometimes he had to send a substitute in addition. The _Pipe Rolls_ show many such payments by stay-at-homes _ne transfretent_ or _pro remanendo ab exercitu_. Thus, in the twelfth year of John’s reign a Crown tenant paid a fine “that he might send two knights to serve for him in the army of Ireland.”[128] ----- Footnote 128: Madox, I. 658. ----- Sometimes, indeed, Henry II. might announce that payments at a certain rate would be accepted generally in lieu of service, but this was when it suited him, not when it suited his military tenants. In this connection twenty shillings per fee became recognized as a usual, though by no means a necessary, rate. (_c_) In the ordinary case, if the tenant in chivalry neither went in person nor obtained leave from the Crown to stay away, he was in evil plight. Defaulters were “_in mercy_”; they sometimes forfeited their entire estates to the Crown,[129] and might be glad to accept such terms of pardon as a gracious King condescended to hold out to them. Sometimes, it is true, quite small amercements were inflicted; the Abbot of Pershore in 1196 escaped with an amercement of 40s.[130] Such leniency, however, was exceptional, and the result of special royal clemency. ----- Footnote 129: See _Pipe Roll_ of 12 John, cited in Madox, I. 663. ----- Footnote 130: See _Pipe Roll_ of Richard I., cited _ibid._ ----- The right to determine the amount of amercements to be taken lay within the province of the Barons of the Exchequer, who also judged whether or not lands had escheated by default. Henry II. seems to have levied money in name of scutage only when actually at war—on seven occasions in all during a reign of thirty-five years; and only once at a rate exceeding 20s., if we may trust Mr. Round,[131] and that when he was putting forth a special effort against Toulouse. Richard I., with all his rapaciousness, levied, apparently, only four scutages during ten years, and the rate of 20s. was never exceeded even in the King’s hour of urgent need,—in 1194, when the arrears of his ransom had to be paid and preparations simultaneously made for war in Normandy. ----- Footnote 131: _Feudal England_, 277 _seq._ ----- At John’s accession, then, three rules might be regarded as having all the prescriptive force of a long unbroken tradition, namely, (1) that scutage was a reserve for extraordinary emergencies, not a normal yearly burden; (2) that the recognized maximum was 20s. per knight’s fee, while a lower rate (13s.4d. and even 10s.) had occasionally been accepted; and (3) that the payment of scutage to the King at a rate previously fixed by him acted as a complete discharge of all obligations due for that occasion.