The importance, both in a forward view and in retrospect of this grant of a wool custom, is very great. Parliament in granting this custom assumed the power of assenting to a tax which previously had been considered within the peculiar province of the king. It made a definite statement of what was to be taken subsequently as the legal rate of duty chargeable upon exports of wool. The rate, which since the beginning of the century had been agreed upon between royal officers and merchants as their reasonable charge was this half mark (6_s._ 8_d._) on each sack of wool weighing 364 pounds, or on the estimated equivalent of a sack, 300 woolfells, and a mark upon each last (or load) of leather.[127] Exactions above this rate were known as _mala tolta_, the evil tolls, and the phrase had been shortened to the single word maletolt. The forty-first chapter of Magna Carta had promised to all merchants freedom “from all evil tolls,” though it continued the “ancient and right customs.” Apparently, however, Henry III with respect to this clause as in many another similar instance, did not deem himself bound to adhere scrupulously to his promise. The Parliament of Edward I at Westminster in 1275 settled the matter; the “great and ancient custom” on wool was legally determined, and thereafter a larger exaction would be regarded as illegal.[128] [Edward’s Second Parliament, 13th October, 1275] Edward summoned a second Parliament for the 13th October following in a manner which gives ground for the presumption that the presence of the knights of the shire in a parliament designed primarily for the raising of money, was already becoming a custom. The point cannot be better illustrated than by a translation of the writ itself.[129] “Since we have bidden the prelates and magnates of our realm,” so it goes, “to be present at our Parliament which we will hold ... at Westminster, to treat with us both concerning the condition of our realm and of certain of our business which we will declare to them at the same time, and as it is expedient that two knights from the county above-mentioned be present at the same Parliament from the body of discreet and lawful knights of the same county, by the reasons above-stated we command you that you cause to be elected in your full county-court (in pleno comitatu) by the assent of the same county, the said two knights and that you cause them to come to us at Westminster in behalf of the community of the said county on the said day, to treat with us and with the above-mentioned prelates and magnates about the above-stated business. And omit none of it.” [Sidenote Attendance of Knights of the Shire “expedient” for uses of taxation]