Though I do not perceive why we should assume any great subdivision of tenures before the statute of _Quia Emptores_, in 18 Edw. I., which prohibited subinfeudation, it is obvious that the committee have pointed out the inconvenience of a scheme which gave all tenants _in capite_ (more numerous in Domesday than they perhaps were aware) a right to assist at great councils. Still, as it is manifest from the early charters, and explicitly admitted by the committee, that the king could raise no extraordinary contribution from his immediate vassals by his own authority, and as there was no feudal subordination between one of these and another, however differing in wealth, it is clear that they were legally entitled to a voice, be it through general or special summons, in the imposition of taxes which they were to pay. It will not follow that they were summoned, or had an acknowledged right to be summoned, on the few other occasions when legislative measures were in contemplation, or in the determinations taken by the king's great council. This can only be inferred by presumptive proof or constitutional analogy. The eleventh article of the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164 declares that archbishops, bishops, and all persons of the realm who hold of the king _in capite_, possess their lands as a barony, and are bound to attend in the judgments of the king's court like other barons. It is plain, from the general tenor of these constitutions, that "universæ personæ regni" must be restrained to ecclesiastics; and the only words which can be important in the present discussion are "sicut barones cæteri." "It seems," says the committee, "to follow that all those termed the king's barons were tenants in chief of the king; but it does not follow that all tenants in chief of the king were the king's barons, and as such bound to attend his court. They might not be bound to attend unless they held their lands of the king in chief 'sicut baroniam,' as expressed in this article with respect to the archbishops and other clergy." (p. 44.) They conclude, however, that "upon the whole the Constitutions of Clarendon, if the existing copies be correct, afford strong ground for presuming that owing suit to the king's great court rendered the tenant one of the king's barons or members of that court, though probably in general none attended who were not specially summoned. It has been already observed that this would not include all the king's tenants in chief, and particularly those who did not hold of him as of his crown, or even to all who did hold of him as of his crown, but not by knight-service or grand serjeanty, which were alone deemed military and honourable tenures; though, whether all who held of the king as of his crown, by knight-service or grand serjeanty, did originally owe suit to the king's court, or whether that obligation was confined to persons holding by a particular tenure, called _tenure per