On the boundary between personal subjection and political subordination we find the liability of the peasantry to pay _tallage_. It could be equally deduced from the principle that a villain has nothing of his own and may be exploited at will by his master or from the political grant of the power of taxation to the representative of feudal privilege. The payment of arbitrary tallage is held during the thirteenth century to imply a servile status[322]. Such tallage at will is not found very often in the documents, although the lord sometimes retained his prerogative in this respect even when sanctioning the customary forms of renders and services. Now and then it is mentioned that the tallage is to be levied once a year[323], although the amount remains uncertain. As a holder of political power the lord has a right to inflict fines and amercements on transgressors[324]. The Court-rolls are full of entries about such payments, and it seems that one of the reasons why very great stress was laid on attendance at the manorial Courts was connected with the liability to all sorts of impositions that was enforced by means of these gatherings. Tenants had to attend and to make presentments, to elect officers, and to serve on juries; and in every case where there was a default or an irregularity of any kind, fines flowed into the lord's exchequer. Lastly, we may classify under the head of political exactions, monopolies and privileges such as those which were called _banalités_ in France: they were imposed on the peasantry by the strong hand, although there was no direct connexion between them and the exercise of any particular function of the State. English medieval documents often refer to the privileged mill, to which all the villains and sometimes the freemen of the Soke were bound to bring their corn[325]; there is also the manorial fold in which all the sheep of the township had to be enclosed[326]. In the latter case the landlord profited by the dung for manuring his land. Special attention was bestowed on supervising the making of beer: Court-rolls constantly speak of persons fined for brewing without licence. Every now and then we come across the wondrous habit of collecting all the villagers on fixed days and making them drink _Scotale_[327], that is ale supplied by the lord--for a good price, of course. [Villain tenure.]