relief, not, as for an entire barony, one hundred marks; but at the rate of five pounds for each knight's fee which they held of the crown. This changed their tenure to one by mere knight-service, and their denomination to tenants in chief. It was not difficult, afterwards, for the greater barons to exclude any from coming to parliament as such without particular writs directed to them, for which purpose some law was probably enacted in the reign of Henry III. If indeed we could place reliance on a nameless author whom Camden has quoted, this limitation of the peerage to such as were expressly summoned depended upon a statute made soon after the battle of Evesham. But no one has ever been able to discover Camden's authority, and the change was, probably, of a much earlier date.[9] [Sidenote: of Madox,] [Sidenote: and observations on both.] Such is the theory of Selden, which, if it rested less upon conjectural alterations in the law, would undoubtedly solve some material difficulties that occur in the opposite view of the subject. According to Madox, tenure by knight-service in chief was always distinct from that by barony. It is not easy, however, to point out the characteristic differences of the two; nor has that eminent antiquary, in his large work, the Baronia Anglica, laid down any definition, or attempted to explain the real nature of a barony. The distinction could not consist in the number of knight's fees; for the barony of Hwayton consisted of only three; while John de Baliol held thirty fees by mere knight-service.[10] Nor does it seem to have consisted in the privilege or service of attending parliament, since all tenants in chief were usually summoned. But whatever may have been the line between these modes of tenure, there seems complete proof of their separation long before the reign of John. Tenants in chief are enumerated distinctly from earls and barons in the charter of Henry I. Knights, as well as barons, are named as present in the parliament of Northampton in 1165, in that held at the same town in 1176, and upon other occasions.[11] Several persons appear in the Liber Niger Scaccarii, a roll of military tenants made in the age of Henry II., who held single knight's fees of the crown. It is, however, highly probable, that, in a lax sense of the word, these knights may sometimes have been termed barons. The author of the Dialogus de Scaccario speaks of those holding greater or lesser baronies, including, as appears by the context, all tenants in chief.[12] The former of these seem to be the majores barones of King John's Charter. And the secundæ dignitatis barones, said by a contemporary historian to have been present in the parliament of Northampton, were in all probability no other than the knightly tenants of the crown.[13] For the word baro, originally meaning only a man, was of very large significance, and is not unfrequently applied to common freeholders, as in the phrase of court-baron. It was used too for the