The people of London rightfully expected to benefit by the granting of the Charter. According to the last clause of the Twelfth Chapter, it was to “be done concerning the aids of the city of London” in the “same way.” The provision is indefinite; whether the “aids” were also to include in their category the more arbitrary and therefore more obnoxious tallage[82] is unknown. The aids were for the most part free-will offerings of the city itself, whereas the tallages were exacted by the king upon his own arbitrary authority as one having the power of a demesne lord over London. And whether or not the phrase “in the same way” means that aids shall be levied by the common counsel of the realm, or merely that they shall be of “reasonable” amount, is difficult of determination. If indeed the former idea was in the minds of the framers of the Charter, when they came to the section providing for the composition of the Common Council, they made no provision for the attendance of any member of the corporation of London, or even for securing their consent. At all events, the king continued to tallage London at not infrequent intervals and almost without question until 1340, when Parliament took the privilege away from Edward III. [Chapter 14] Before we advance to a consideration of the true importance of the Twelfth Chapter, in order to have a complete understanding of its position in the line of progress toward parliamentary taxation, we are obliged to look at the method by which the common counsel of the kingdom was to be taken. Chapter Fourteen[83] lays down the rule according to which the assembly was to be called that should hold this power of assenting to scutages and aids. The method of summons was simple; it involved the issuance of writs, individually to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and the greater barons, and collectively to the lesser barons through the agency of the royal sheriffs and bailiffs. The writs gave at least forty days’ notice as to the place and time of meeting, and specified the business which furnished the occasion for the Council. As for its composition, the answer is very simple; it was a gathering of tenants-in-chief of the king, of crown vassals. The line between the greater and the lesser barons was ill-defined. Roughly, however, it divided the baronage into classes, one of which included the baron whose holdings embraced the major part of a county, and the other the tenant of the king whose dwelling was a cottage set in his dozen acres. It is probable that the lesser barons played no considerable part in the assembly, and that their attendance or non-attendance was of little consequence. The light of the lesser folk was as yet hid under the bushel. [The advance toward Parliamentary taxation]