I must acknowledge that in a good many cases I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation for various terms which occur in the records for the divers payments. An attentive study of local usages will probably lead to definite conclusions as to most of them[638]. From a general point of view it is interesting to notice, that we find already in our records some attempts to bring all the perplexing variety of payments to a few main designations. Annual rents are, of course, reckoned out under the one head of 'census.' Very obvious reasons suggested the advisability of computing the entire money-proceed yielded by the estate[639]. It sometimes happens that the general sum made up in this way, fixed as it is at a constant amount, is used almost as a name for a complex of land[640]. A division of rents into old and new ones does not require any particular explanation[641]. But several other subdivisions are worth notice. The rent paid from the land often appears separately as _landgafol_ or _landchere_. It is naturally opposed to payments that fall on the person as poll taxes[642]. These last are considered as a return for the personal protection guaranteed by the lord to his subjects. Of the contrast between _gafol_ as a customary rent and _mál_ as a payment in commutation I have spoken already, and I have only to add now, that _gild_ is sometimes used in the same sense as _mál_[643]. Another term in direct opposition to _gafol_ is the Latin _donum_[644]. It seems to indicate a special payment imposed as a kind of voluntary contribution on the entire village. To be sure, there was not much free will to be exercised in the matter; all the dependent people of the township had to pay according to their means[645]. But the tax must have been considered as a supplementary one in the same sense as supplementary boon-work. It may have been originally intended in some cases as an equivalent for some rights surrendered by the lord, as a _mál_ or _gild_, in fact[646]. In close connexion with the _donum_ we find the _auxilium_[647], also an extraordinary tax paid once a year, and distinguished from the ordinary rent. It appears as a direct consequence of the political subjection of the tenantry[648]: it is, in fact, merely an expression of the right to tallage. Our records mention it sometimes as apportioned according to the number of cattle owned by the peasant, but this concerns only the mode of imposition of the duty and hardly its origin[649]. As I have said already, the _auxilium_ is in every respect like the _donum_. One very characteristic trait of both taxes is, that they are laid primarily on the whole village, which is made to pay a certain round sum as a body[650]. The burden is divided afterwards between the several householders, and the number of cattle, and more particularly of the beasts of plough kept on the holding, has of course to be taken into account more than anything else. But the