baroniam_, as has been asserted, the Constitutions of Clarendon do not assist to ascertain." (p. 45.) But this, as they point out, involves the question whether the _Curia Regis_, mentioned in these constitutions, was not only a judicial but a legislative assembly, or one competent to levy a tax on military tenants, since by the terms of the charter of Henry I., confirmed by that of Henry II., all such tenants were clearly exempted from taxation, except by their own consents. They touch slightly on the reign of Richard I. with the remark that "the result of all which they have found with respect to the constitution of the legislative assemblies of the realm still leaves the subject in great obscurity." (p. 49.) But it is remarkable that they have never alluded to the presence of tenants in chief, knights as well as barons, at the parliament of Northampton under Henry II. They come, however, rather suddenly to the conclusion that "the records of the reign of John seem to give strong ground for supposing that all the king's tenants in chief by military tenure, if not all the tenants in chief,[460] were at one time deemed necessary members of the common councils of the realm, when summoned for extraordinary purposes, and especially for the purpose of obtaining a grant of any extraordinary aid to the king; and this opinion accords with what has generally been deemed originally the law in France, of other countries where what is called the feudal system of tenures has been established." (p. 54.) It cannot surely admit of a doubt, and has been already affirmed more than once by the committee, that for an extraordinary grant of money the consent of military tenants in chief was required long before the reign of John. Nor was that a reign, till the enactment of the Great Charter, when any fresh extension of political liberty was likely to have become established. But the difficulty may still remain with respect to "extraordinary purposes" of another description.