For we see here an allusion to that special summons, to which, whether for council or for war, each ‘baron’ was entitled. One of the grievances of Becket, it may be remembered, at Northampton was that he had not been summoned ‘par sei,’ but only through the sheriff. Perhaps, however, the most important contribution made by this poem to institutional history is found in that most important passage, ll. 3064–3177, which the editor describes as “a sort of original Domesday Book of the first Anglo-Norman settlement,” and as presenting all the appearance of being, in substance, a contemporary account. For, apart from its obvious value as “the only connected account of the subinfeudation of Leinster and Meath by earl Richard Fitz Gilbert and Hugh de Laci, respectively,” it affords a very striking confirmation of the new theory on knight service advanced by me in the pages of the ‘English Historical Review,’ in which, as against the accepted view maintained by Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, I contended that the _quota_ of knight service was determined not by the area of the fief, but by “the unit of the feudal host,” and is therefore reckoned in round numbers, and is almost invariably a multiple of 5, if not of 10.[350] I proved this to be the case for England, and appealed to the Irish evidence as confirming the discovery. But I did not quote this remarkable passage, from which we learn that in Meath--which Henry had granted to Hugh de Lacy for the service of fifty knights (l. 2730)--Richard Fleming was enfeoffed to serve with twenty knights, and Gilbert de Nugent (as we learn from charter evidence) with five; while in Leinster, which the Earl, as we learn from charters, held by the service of a hundred knights, Maurice de Prendergast received his fief “pur dis [10] chevalers servise,” Walter de Riddlesford was bound to furnish twenty knights, and a certain Reginald was assigned fifteen as his quota. Our confidence in the poem is increased by the fact that it names fifty knights as the service due from Meath, which we know to be correct, while so good an authority as the ‘Gesta’ makes it a hundred. The whole of this curious passage is ably annotated by Mr. Orpen, and the puzzling place-names identified. But, familiar though he clearly is with almost every source of information, he would seem to be unacquainted with the valuable Gormanston Register, which contains, I believe, a transcript (fo. 190 _a_) of the actual charter by which earl Richard granted to Maurice Fitz Gerald Naas and Wicklow (ll. 3085–92)--the former for the service of five knights.[351] The same Register has copies of three charters (fos. 5_b_, 188_b_), showing how the lands spoken of in the poem as granted to Gilbert de Nangle came, under Richard I., to Walter de Lacy, who granted them in turn to his brother Hugh.