Rejecting “the accepted definition of cornage as a mere seignorial due in respect of the pasturage of cattle,” Mr. Hall explains that it rests on “a radical misconception,” namely, on “the argument that the references to military service performed by” the Cumberland cornage “tenants are later interpolations in the reign of Edward I.,” whereas, as he observes, they are mentioned in a list of about the end of John’s reign. The criticism is curiously characteristic. For, on turning to Professor Maitland’s paper (p. 629), we find not a hint of “interpolation”; he has merely--misled, no doubt, by the title page of the printed ‘Testa’--mistaken a list of John’s reign for one of “Edward I.’s time.” And, so far from assigning to that period the first mention of this service, he refers us, in the same passage, to its mention in 1238, when, as he actually observes, it “looks like an ancient trait.” The misconception, therefore, is not his, but Mr. Hall’s. In the manuscript itself we find the ward service of Newcastle and the details of the Northumberland cornage occupying a single page (fo. 195 _d_). But this circumstance, for which I shall account fully below, in no way connects the two. On the contrary, we find eleven territorial units here entered as paying “cornage” in addition to their payments for castle-ward. The two payments, it will be observed, could not both be commutations of the same thing.[573] It is quite clear that, in Cumberland, all who held “per cornagium” were bound, apart from the payment of that due, to march respectively in the van and in the rear when the king was invading or retreating from Scotland, a duty for which they were, obviously, qualified by their local knowledge; but this had absolutely nothing to do with castle-ward, nor is even this special service mentioned in the case of Northumberland. Cornage, from the time we first meet with it, appears in our records as a money payment, not as a military service, and even Mr. Hall admits that the name is derived from horned beasts, unlike the ‘ward penny’ of the south, in which he would seek its parallel, and of which the name leaves us in no doubt as to its nature. The institution of cornage, therefore, is, we shall find, as obscure as ever, although there is some evidence, unknown, it seems, to Professor Maitland as it is to Mr. Hall. Its historical importance is beyond question. Of the cornage of Northumberland, as recorded in the ‘Red Book,’ the editor writes that “it is of the highest importance to trace its earlier history in the records of the Exchequer.” It can, as he says, be traced back to 1164; but I cannot accept his suggestion as to why it then made its appearance. One must turn, for comparison, to that of Cumberland, concerning which we read as follows: