FOBMS OF LAND TENTTRE. 167 



rate than the large fees. In the reign of Henry II, Reginald 

 Earl of Cornwall held 215 Knights' fees in Cornwall and 

 Devon. These fees, and all others which were created before 

 the reign of Henry I, were called fees of the old ffeoffment, 

 and those which were subsequently granted were designated as 

 of the new ffeoffment. 



We have seen that vassals were under the obligation of 

 attending their lords to the wars whenever summoned to do so, 

 but, from various causes, their actual personal attendance had at 

 an early date, to a considerable extent, fallen into disuse. 

 Personal attendance was required most strictly, if not solely from 

 tenants holding by Knight's service " in capite ut de Corona''^ 

 We find upon the Rolls of Parliament numerous summonses to 

 such persons to appear at a certain rendezvous with horses and 

 arms according to the number of their fees, &c., on a given day, 

 to proceed with the king on a specified expedition. If a man, 

 however, held his lands of the king by knight's service as of 

 an honour then being in the king's hands, and not as of the 

 Crown, such a tenant was permitted to send a Knight as a sub- 

 stitute, or to compound for the service by the payment of a sum 

 of money assessed entirely upon such Knight's fees and parts of 

 fees, which produced a fund enabling the king to subsidise an 

 army of mercenaries. This payment was called Escuage, 

 Scutage, or Scutagium, and it was not chargeable upon lands 

 held in frank almoigne or socage. But it must not be understood 

 that the term scutage was strictly limited to payments made for 

 default of attendance with the army ; in early times it had a 

 wider signification, and applied to any payments assessed upon 

 knight's fees, whether such payment had reference to the army 

 o." not : — for instance, the aid for the ransom of King Richard I, 

 is called " scutagium ad redemptionem, Hegis.'^ 



Erom the time of the Conquest until nearly the end of the 

 reign of King John, all the tenants holding of the King in 

 capite were summoned to the Q-reat Council of the Nation. The 

 learned Selden believed all such tenants to have been of equal 

 rank, and thought that the holding even of a single Knight's 

 fee in chief constituted a Barony, and entitled the tenant to a 

 writ of summons. Maddox, however, an equal authority, took 



