Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

Baderun of Monmouth has heard the writ read out in the county court;[⁴⁵] Earl Patrick also has heard the writ read out.[⁴⁶] William fitz Siward derives from the sheriff, he tells us, his knowledge of the writ:[⁴⁷] even the bishop of Chester has received his instructions from the sheriff.[⁴⁸] But more especially do I rely upon the return of the Archbishop of York because he recites the tenor of the writ in terms which can leave no doubt that it was addressed, through the sheriff, to the whole shire collectively.[⁴⁹] If the Archbishop of York did not receive a special writ, we may fairly infer that no other tenant can have done so.

Further, I believe that as the 'barons' received their instructions from the sheriffs, so they also sent in their returns through those officers. The memorandum, for instance, on the missing carta of Osbert fitz Hugh informs us that it was brought to the exchequer by William de Beauchamp. Now, William de Beauchamp was sheriff of the shire. This would account for the grouping of the returns 'per singulos comitatus', as Swereford expresses it, and indeed this arrangement would but follow the existing practice of collecting the scutage shire by shire.

Returning now to the terms of the inquiry, it is obvious that the tenant (baro) to whom such queries were addressed must of necessity have belonged to one of these three classes—

(a) Those who had created the exact number of knights' fees sufficient to discharge their 'service'.

(b) Those who had created more than sufficient.

(c) Those who had created less than sufficient.

This last class requires some explanation. When the number of knights' fees created was not sufficient to discharge the baron's 'service', the balance of that service remained charged on the non-infeudated portion of his fief, that is, on the 'demesne', and was technically said to be 'super dominium'. It is all-important that this should be grasped, for it might otherwise be supposed that such a phrase as 'quot milites super dominium' implied the existence of actual knights enfeoffed on the demesne, which, to those who realize the working of the system of knight-service, is an absolute contradiction in terms. This, it will be found, beautifully explains the first article of the Assize of Arms (1181)—that every tenant is to keep in stock harness for as many knights 'quot habuerit feoda militum in dominio suo'.[⁵⁰] That is to say, that if, after deducting the knights actually enfeoffed, there remained due from his fief a balance of knight-service, he must keep in readiness harness sufficient for those knights whom he would have to provide himself to discharge that balance.[⁵¹]

Having made this point clear, I now pass to the immediate object of the inquest of 1166. What that object was, no one has as yet discovered. Dr Stubbs, for instance, in his preface to the Pipe-Roll of 1166, writes: 'On the immediate purpose for which the inquiry was made—and it can scarcely be doubted that it was for the collection of a scutage—we shall look for further information in the rolls of the succeeding years.' My own researches enable me to assert that this inquest formed part of a financial revolution hitherto ignored, which deserves to be compared with those other innovations in administration and finance that characterized the latter half of the twelfth century in England.

When we come to place side by side the returns of 1166 and the payments made upon those returns in 1168, we find (at least, on the lay fiefs) the same distinction in both between 'the old feoffment' and 'the new'. But while the returns, as we saw, were made under three heads,[⁵²] the payments were made under two, namely, under the two feoffments. The reason of this difference can be established beyond dispute: the exchequer clerks had, in every instance, added the returns under the third head to those under the first, and classed them together as 'old feoffment'. This is one of the points which, I think, have never been hitherto explained.

Plenty of examples might be given, but these two will suffice. Walter de Aincurt returns 24 fees de veteri, 5 de novo, and 11 super dominium. The exchequer, in 1168, records him as paying on 35 fees de veteri, and on 5 de novo.[⁵³] Richard de Haie returns 11 fees de veteri, 4 de novo, and 5 super dominium. The exchequer records him as paying on 16 de veteri, and 4 de novo.

The main point, however, on which I propose to insist, is that these returns were intended to provide, and, as a matter of fact, did provide a new feudal assessment, wholly superseding the old one, in no case to the advantage of the tenant, but in many to the advantage of the crown. The modus operandi was as follows. Instead of either adhering to the old assessment (servitium debitum), or uniformly substituting a new one based on the fees actually created, the crown selected in every case whichever of these two systems told in its own favour and against the tenant of the fief. If he had enfeoffed fewer knights than his servitium debitum required, the crown retained that servitium as the irreducible minimum of his assessment; but if he had created an excess of fees, the crown added that excess to his pre-existing assessment and increased the 'service' due from him pro tanto. This discovery is no conjecture, but is capable of arithmetical demonstration.