The heiress of Aquitaine had claims to the county of Toulouse, which in 1159 Henry prepared himself to enforce. The distance of the scene of contest, the difficulties of the way, the warlike character of count Raymond, and the probability that he would be assisted by Louis, who was suzerain to the duke of Aquitaine, all combined to render it probable that the expedition would be long and arduous. Hitherto, on an expedition, it had been the practice strictly to enforce the obligation of personal attendance on the king in arms according to the array. All those holding by tenure of knight service had been required to come; and essoins, or excuses from personal attendance and attendance by deputy, had been allowed only to spiritual persons holding per baroniam, or in cases of sickness, where the king's tenant was ill and languishing.' But a growing disinclination to foreign service affected all the lesser knights. Settled in English homes, and without any continental connection, they felt little interest in any foreign expeditions, and less than usual, if any, in this distant contest for the extension of the possessions of the duke of Aquitaine.

On the other hand, the feudal array had always proved difficult to manage: important barons arrived late at the muster of the host; and all sorts of disputes and wranglings occurred about place and precedence; while the limitation of the term of compulsory service to forty days in the year rendered necessary, when that term was completed, some new arrangement for any prolonged expedition. A full purse and an army of mercenaries would certainly suit the object the king

had in view better than those inconvenient feudal arrangements; and these the king and his chancellor, Thomas Becket, now his intimate friend and chief adviser, determined to obtain for the expedition to Toulouse.

Already, for the army for the king's expedition to Wales in the second year of the reign, the prelates bound to military service had been required, in lieu of attendance, to pay twenty shillings for every knight's fee. This precedent was followed and extended in its application; and king Henry, taking into consideration the length and difficulty of the way, and being unwilling to disturb either the knights who lived in the country or the burghers and country people generally, levied, in Normandy, sixty Angevin shillings on every knight's fee, and from all his other possessions, in Normandy, England, or elsewhere, according to that which seemed to him good, and took with him, for the expedition to Toulouse, his chief barons with a few personal followers, and an innumerable host of mercenaries.' 1

The rate for England was two marks, 1l. 6s. 8d., on the fee of 20l. annual value; and the tax was termed SCUTAGE, or shield money :- Hoc anno, 1159, rex Henricus scotaguim sive scutagium de Anglia accepit.'2 The expedition to Toulouse lasted three months.

This land tax on the knight's fee, in composition for military service in person by the king's tenant in 1 Rob de Monte, Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 122.

2 Gervas, Twysden, Hist. Angl. Script. p. 1381.

capite and his followers, was again employed in 1172; when Henry collected another scutage from those of his tenants in chief who did not accompany him or send any knights or money for his expedition in the previous year to take possession of Ireland; but on this occasion the rate, as for a less expensive expedition than that of Toulouse, was only twenty shillings on the fee.

After this, there was, in 1186, a scutage for an expedition to Galloway, which fell through in consequence of the submission of Ronald, who met the king at Carlisle and did homage for the principality.

The scutage was charged under the title, 'De scutagio militum qui nec abierunt,' &c., Madox, p. 438.

CHAPTER III.

TALLAGE. THE TAXATION OF ROYAL DEMESNE.

Nature of tallage. Obligation of the tenants of demesne. The auxilium burgi. The auxilium extended to the rural tenants on the disappearance of the danegeld, 1163. The practice in collecting a tallage.

THE obligation of the tenants of royal demesne to contribute towards the discharge of the king's debt incurred for his table and his host during an expedition,1 or on any other necessary occasion of unusual expense, was general; but though it extended to all the tenants, originally the practice appears to have been, on occasions when danegeld was levied, to allow the rural tenants and those urban tenants that fell within the scope of the hidage, to be quit of their obligation by reason of their payment of danegeld. The cities and towns not within the scope of the hidage paid by way of auxilium or aid; and these auxilia, at first irregularly charged, changed in time to contributions corresponding to the danegeld; so that, when the county of Lincoln, including the rural tenants of demesne, yielded danegeld, the citizens of Lincoln yielded an auxilium; and so in the case of the county of York and the city of York, and so on.2 This auxilium civitatis, or auxilium 1 Ante, p. 18.

2 Other counties and towns paid in the like manner.' Pipe Rolls, quoted, Madox, p. 480.

burgi, was levied by the town under an assessment made by themselves and paid by them into the exchequer.

But danegeld was, obviously, a small contribution from tenants whose liability extended to the decimation of their goods; and occasionally the rural tenants paid over and above danegeld, dona or auxilia, gifts or aids to the king, but to what extent is not clear. After the disappearance of the danegeld, in 1163, the auxilium was enforced as a frequent tax from all the tenants, rural and urban alike; and these compulsory auxilia from all the tenants are usually termed TALLAGES.

A tallage was frequently collected for an intended. expedition, that is to say, before the obligation to tallage was incurred, and therefore necessarily was by way of arrangement or composition with the tenants; rarely indeed was the obligation enforced to a decimation or tithing of the tenant's goods. In practice, before an expedition, a demand was first made of a certain sum from the citizens of London, with the option, in case of refusal to compound, of being decimated, at the end of the expedition, towards the discharge of the king's debt, upon which decimation it would be compulsory to swear to the value of their goods. As a rule, the sum demanded was paid, or a certain sum was settled by arrangement. And after such tallaging of the metropolis, the justices in eyre went through their proper circuits, and tallaged all the king's tenants in ancient demesne and burgage tenants, upon the basis of the grant made by London, returning every assessment to the exchequer. The sum charged