(II) By an arbitrary payment of certain mysterious sums, which prove to be multiples of the unit 15s 3d. But there is no fixed proportion to be traced between the amount paid and the number of servitia due. Numerous instances are found of a single knight's fee being charged with a sum equivalent to five of these mysterious units. Magnates, again, are found paying apparently strange sums, which prove on dissection to represent 50, 100, 200 and even 300 of these units. The clue to the mystery is found in an entry on the Pipe-Roll of the following year (12 Henry II), which proves that this unit was the pecuniary equivalent of a serviens, and that the various payers had 'promised' the king so many servientes for the war in Wales.[161] Such 'promises' were evidently offers, made independently of the actual service due from the 'promising' party. Following up this clue, we see that the Abbot of Abingdon must, like the Bishop of Hereford, have promised 100 'serjeants',[162] that the Abbot of St Alban's must have done likewise,[163] while the Bishop of London must have promised 150, in addition, be it noted, to paying a scutage of a marc on each knight's fee (20) of his servitium debitum.[164] For the rolls of 1162 and 1163 prove that he had duly paid the scutage of the former year, and that this was a further payment. The varying form of these entries should be observed, for it was evidently quite immaterial to the clerks whether they wrote '5 serjeants' or their equivalent—76 shillings and 3 pence.[165] Taking the pay of the serviens at 1d a day, the unit in question would represent six months' pay (for a year of 366 days).
But, for our present purpose, we must confine ourselves to the scutage proper. The passage on which I would specially dwell is the entry on the roll in which the custos of the archbishopric of Canterbury 'reddit compotum de cxiii. li. de Militibus de Archiepiscopatu de ii. Exercitibus' (p. 109).[166] In the first place, we have here, surely, witness to the two Welsh campaigns of this year, which Mr Eyton adopts, following Mr Bridgeman,[167] but which Miss Norgate rejects.[168] Secondly, this sum resolves itself, on analysis, into two constituents of 84¾ marcs each. Now the return for the archbishopric the following year is: 'Archiepiscopus habet iiijxx. et iiijor. et dimidium et quartam partem feffatos.'[169] Having set forth this exact corroboration, I will briefly trace the servitium of the See. In 1156 and 1159 it pays no scutage when the other church fiefs do, but within six months of Theobald's death it pays to the scutage of 1161 on a servitium of sixty knights, being then in the hands of the crown. Under Becket, in 1162, it is once more omitted; but in 1165 it again pays, as we have seen, and now not on sixty knights but on 84¾. In 1168 it contributes, on the same amount, to the auxilium, and in 1172, but the latter year is the first in which the recognoscit formula is employed, enabling us to determine that, as in 1161, the servitium debitum was sixty knights.
The typical difference between these sixty knights and the 84¾ actually enfeoffed will serve to illustrate the point on which I insist throughout. Had the fee been held by its tenant, he would have raised 84¾ marcs, paid sixty to the crown, and kept 24¾ for himself.[170] But when a custos held the fief, he could keep nothing back, and therefore paid over the whole. We have, I think, an illustration of the same kind in the payment (p. 202, note 76) by the custos of the Romare fief, 'de noviter feffatis' (noviter, be it observed not yet de novo).
Having brought the levies down to 1165, I hope it has now been made clear that the officials of the exchequer were well aware of the amount of servitium debitum from every fief, the levies being always based on the said amount. Swereford, therefore, was quite mistaken in the inference he drew from the inquest of 1166:[171] indeed, his words prove that he completely misunderstood the problem.
This was the last levy raised previous to the making of the returns (cartae) in 1166. These returns were followed in 1168 by the first levy on the new assessment. I have already dealt with the changes which this new assessment involved, but I would here again insist upon the fact that the church and the lay fiefs were not dealt with alike, the latter being assessed wholly de novo, while the former retained their old assessments, while accounting separately, and under protest, for the fees in excess of their servitium debitum. So far as the lay fiefs were concerned, their servitia, congenital with Norman rule, were now swept away. Here, from the single county of Northumberland, are three cases in point:
| 1162 | 1168 |
|---|---|
| De scutagio Walteri de Bolebec. In thesauro v. marcae.[172] | Walterus de Bolebec redd. comp. de iiii. marcis et dim. de eodem auxilio. Idem debet xlviii. s. et v. d. pro tribus Militibus et iiabus. terciis partibus Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
| De scutagio Stephani de Bulemer. In thesauro v. marcae. | Stephanus de Bulemer redd. comp. de iiii. marcis de eodem auxilio. Idem debet xxiii. s. et iiii. d. de i. milite et dim. et quarta parte Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
| De scutagio Radulfi de Wircestria. In thesauro i. marca.[173] | Radulfus de Wigornio redd. comp. de i. marca de eodem auxilio pro i. milite. Idem debet xiii. s. de dim. Mil. et de i. tercia et de i. septima parte Mil. de Novo feffamento. |
The change thus made by the restless king was permanent in its effect, and thenceforth the only assessment recognized was that based upon the fees, which, by 1166, had been created de veteri and de novo.[174]
Before leaving the subject of this levy, there is one point on which I would touch. When we find, as we often do, that the sum paid in 1168 in respect of a fief does not tally with the number of fees recorded in the cartae, we must remember that in the Liber Niger and Liber Rubeus we have not the original cartae, but only transcripts liable to clerical error. Checking the cartae by these payments, we constantly find cases in which the number of fees should be slightly greater than is recorded in the carta.[175] I suspect that the transcriber, in these cases, has omitted entries in the original carta, and this suspicion is strongly confirmed by the fact that where the original return enables us to test the transcript, we find in the great carta for the honour of Clare that the original transcriber has omitted half a fee of William de Hastinges, has left out altogether the entry 'Reginaldus de Cruce, dimidium militem', and has changed the quarter fee of Geoffrey fitz Piers into half a fee; while in that of the Bishop of Chichester, Robert de Denton's half fee is converted into a whole one. The later (Red Book) transcriber has made a further omission.
Another source of discrepancy may be found in the dangerous resemblance of formulae. Thus the carta of Ranulf fitz Walter records three and three-quarter fees duly accounted for. Yet his payment in 1168 is not £2 10s but £2 4s 5d. The explanation is that the holding was really three and one-third fees,[176] but the transcriber read 'iij[a.] pars' (one-third) as 'iij. partes' (three-quarters).
How easily such errors arose may be seen in the elaborate entries on Simon de Beauchamp's fief. Here the formula 'decem denarios quando Rex accipit marcam de milite', correctly reproduced in the Black Book, becomes 'x. denarius', etc., in the Red Book. The former expression means 'tenpence in the marc' (i.e. one-sixteenth of a fee); whereas the latter is equivalent to 'the tenth penny in the marc' (i.e. one-tenth of a fee), and upsets the whole reckoning. The correct formula is a not uncommon one and should be compared with the 'de xx. solidis viii. denarios' (eightpence in the pound) which is given as the holding of two knights of the honour of Clare, and represents the thirtieth of a fee.[177]