Swereford's extraordinary failure to understand this roll aright is possibly due to the fact that most of the relevant payments are entered without mention of their object. He seems to have been very dependent upon the rolls explaining themselves, and to have worked in the spirit of a copying clerk rather than of an intelligent student.
One more example of his errors will suffice. In his abstracts from the aid 'ad maritandam primogenitam filiam regis' (1168), we read:
Abbas Gloucestriæ de promissione, sed non numeratur quid; sed in rotulo praecedenti dicitur:—Abbas Gloucestriæ debet xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d. de veteri scutagio Walliae.
Now (1) the amount of the abbot's contribution is duly entered on the roll ('xl. marcas de promissione de eodem auxilio'), and it is not paid in respect of fees, but is a voluntary proffer; (2) the phrase in the preceding roll is not 'de veteri scutagio', but 'de veteri exercitu'; (3) the payment there recorded represents a contribution of fifty servientes, and had nothing to do with scutage, for the abbot (as Swereford should have known) did not hold by military service, and ought not, therefore, to figure in his lists at all.[120]
Let us turn, therefore, to the rolls themselves. Now, although the language of the exchequer was not so precise as we could wish, it is possible, more or less, to distinguish and classify these levies. Thus, we have of course a typical 'aid' in the levy for the marriage of the king's daughter (1168), while, on the other hand, we have an equally typical 'scutage' in 1156, in the payments made by the church tenants in lieu of military service.
On the institution of 'scutage' there has been much misconception. It is placed by our historians among the great innovations wrought by Henry II, who is supposed by them to have introduced it in 1156.[121] Here we see, once again, the danger of seeking our information on such points secondhand, instead of going straight to the fountainhead for ourselves.
John of Salisbury implies that scutage was no novelty in 1156 when he writes, not that the king imposed it, but that he 'could not remit it'. This inference is at once confirmed by the appearance of scutage eo nomine in the reign of Henry I.
The following charter is found in the (MS.) Liber Eliensis (Lib. III), No. xxi, and in the Cottonian MS. Nero A. 15:
H. rex Anglorum Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Abbatibus, Comitibus, etc. Salutem. Sciatis me condonasse Ecclesiæ S. Ætheldredæ de Ely pro Dei amore et anima Patris et Matris meae et pro redemptione peccatorum meorum, et petitione Hervei ejusdem Ecclesie Episcopi 40 libras de illis 100 libris quas predicta Ecclesia solebat dare de Scutagio quando Scutagium currebat[122] per terram meam Anglie: ita quod Ecclesia amodo inperpetuum non dabit inde nisi 60 libras quando Scutagium per terram evenerit, et ita inperpetuum sit de predictis libris Ecclesia predicta quieta. T. Rogero Episcopo Saresberiensi, Gaufrido Cancellario meo et Roberto de Sigillo et Willelmo de Tancarvilla et Willelmo de Albineio Pincerna et Radulfo Basset et Gaufrido de Clintona et Willelmo de Pondelarche. Apud Eilinges in transitu meo.
This is followed by (No. xxii) a grant of Chatteris Abbey to the church of Ely;[123] and this again is followed, in a register of Chatteris Abbey,[124] by a remission of 6s 7d Wardpenny hitherto paid by that abbey. The first and third charters receive singular confirmation, being thus accounted for in the Pipe-Roll of Henry I: