But there is another piece of evidence which points to the National Council itself giving assent to taxation. In the Chronicle of the Monastery of Abingdon occurs a quotation of an order from Henry to his officers exempting the lands of a certain abbot from the payment of an “aid which my barons have given me.”[25] Whether or not this statement can be taken as substantiating the theory of assent depends upon a point of time; was the gift of the barons before or after the laying of the tax? If the gift was indeed prior to the levy, then the evidence is conclusive that the barons assented to taxation; if, on the other hand, the barons gave the aid after the levy had been made, the statement refers solely to the actual payment of the tax. The tense of the Latin verb, however, and the circumstances in which the king writes, seem to point to the former alternative; Henry directs that the Exchequer exempt the abbot’s lands from the collection of an aid, not which the barons were giving him, but which they have given him. It is possible to infer, then, that sometimes, at least, the barons formally assented to the levying of an extraordinary aid. But this assent must not be taken as proof that the barons discussed taxation in formal session or that they had any generally recognized power of choice. None of the records of the time, though they speak emphatically of the oppressiveness of the taxes,[26] suggest that at any time the barons refused to give the king what he asked for. The probability is that Henry I sought baronial assent merely as a matter of form, and that he did it out of respect, more or less conscious, for the theory that contributions of a feudatory toward the support of the crown should be of a nature voluntary. The perfunctory character of the assent, together with the absence of evidence looking to a refusal, points to nothing so much as the firmness of the royal grip upon the purses of the nation. [Stephen, 1135-1154] During the major part of King Stephen’s nineteen turbulent years, feudalism and anarchy ran hand in hand. Such progress as had been making toward parliamentary taxation ceased. Stephen showed himself an adept at misgovernment and succeeded in nothing so well as in his own discomfiture.