Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

But the Abingdon Chronicle, quite independently, gives the same explanation, and traces the quota of knights to the action taken by the Crown:

Quum jam regis edicto in annalibus annotarentur quot de episcopiis quotve de abbatiis ad publicam rem tuendam milites (si forte hinc quid causae propellendae contingeret) exigerentur, etc.[²²⁸]

Moreover, the Ely Chronicle bears the same witness, telling us that William Rufus, at the commencement of his reign,

debitum servitium quod pater suus imposuerat ab ecclesiis violenter exigit.[²²⁹]

It also tells us that, when undertaking his campaign against Malcolm (1072), the Conqueror

jusserat tam abbatibus quam episcopis totius Angliae debita militiae obsequia transmitti;[²³⁰]

and it also describes how he fixed the quota of knights due by an arbitrary act of will.[²³¹] The chronicler, like Matthew Paris, lays stress upon the facts that (1) the burden was a wholly new one; (2) its incidence was determined by the royal will alone.[²³²]

Here, perhaps, we have the clue to the (rare) clerical exemptions from the burden of military tenure, such as the abbeys of Gloucester and of Battle.[²³³]

The beginnings of sub-infeudation consequent on the Conqueror's action are distinctly described in the cases of Abingdon and Ely, and alluded to in those of Peterborough[²³⁴] and Evesham. At the first of these, Athelelm

primo quidem stipendariis in hoc utebatur. At his sopitis incursibus ... abbas mansiones possessionum ecclesiae pertinentibus inde delegavit, edicto cuique tenore parendi de suae portionis mansione.[²³⁵]