If it can be proved that John, almost from his accession, deliberately altered all three of these well-established rules, and that too in the teeth of the keen opposition of a high-spirited baronage whose members felt that their pride and prestige as well as their money-bags were attacked, a distinct step is taken towards understanding the crisis of 1215. Such knowledge would explain why a storm, long brewing, burst in John’s reign, neither sooner nor later; and even why some of the disreputable stories told by the chroniclers and accepted by Blackstone and others, found inventors and willing believers. It is here maintained that John did make changes in all three directions; and, further, that the incidence of this increase in feudal burdens was rendered even more unendurable by two considerations:—because at his accession there remained unpaid (particularly from the fiefs of the northern knights) large arrears of the scutages imposed in his brother’s reign,[132] and because in June, 1212, John drew the feudal chain tight by a drastic and galling measure. In that month he instituted a strict inquest into the amount of feudal service exigible from every estate in England, to prevent any dues escaping his wide net, and to revive all services and payments that had lapsed or were in danger of lapsing. ----- Footnote 132: Miss Norgate, _John Lackland_, p. 122. ----- That he made the first two changes becomes a certainty from a glance at the table of scutages actually extorted during his reign, as these are here copied from a list compiled by a writer of authority who has no special theory to support,[133] viz.: First scutage of reign— 1198-9— 2 marks per knight’s fee. Second " " 1200-1 2 " " Third " " 1201-2 2 " " Fourth " " 1202-3 2 " " Fifth " " 1203-4 2 " " Sixth " " 1204-5 2 " " Seventh " " 1205-6 20s. " Eighth " " 1209-10 2 marks " Ninth " " 1210-11 2 " " Tenth " " 1210-11 20s. " Eleventh " " 1213-14 3 marks " ----- Footnote 133: Miss Norgate, _John Lackland_, p. 123 note, correcting Swereford’s lists in the _Red Book of Exchequer_. ----- It will be seen that, in the very first year of his reign, John took a scutage, and that, too, at a rate above the established normal, at two marks per _scutum_ (only once equalled, thirty years before, and then under special circumstances). Even one such exaction must have made the already sulky Crown tenants look askance.