The Constitutional History of England

66 Constitu f io~zal History PERIODwe cannot say that a certain definite extent or value of landwas either necessary or sufficient to make a man entitled tothe special summons. Then again in this same Magna Cartawe find a distinction as to reliefs, the heir of the baron is topay for an entire barony (haronia) a hundred pounds, oraccording to some copies a hundred marks, the heir of theknight holding in chief of the king is to pay a hundredshillings for the knight's fee. It seems that the baro who hasa baronia in the one clause is the baro major who is to have aspecial summons in the other clause. The process of narrowingthe import of the word baron to those who are entitled tothe special summons goes on during the following century.Tenancy in chief is not sufficient now to give a man this titleof baro ; he may hold in chief and yet be merely miles. Theestate of the baron is a barony, but though there may be atheory floating about that the barony is or should be relatedto the knight's fee as the mark is related to the shilling, thatis to say, that the barony should consist of thirteen knight'sfees and a third-still it seems certain that an estate of thisvalue was neither necessary, nor in itself sufficient, to entitlethe holder to the special summons. Certain particular estateshad come to be regarded as baronies and to pay the heavierrelief, we can say very little more.During the period which ends with the charter we havelittle evidence as to the constitution of the national assembly.The earliest writ of summons that we have is one addressedto the Bishop of Salisbury in 1205 ; of general summonses sentout through the sheriffs we have none preserved; but verypossibly throughout the reign of Henry thesecond the assemblyhad been constituted after the fashion prescribed by thecharter. During that reign councils had been frequent;Henry was a strong king, not afraid of meeting his vassals,with a policy of his own and a policy which required theirsupport. Some great laws, I may remind you, were made inhis reign, though the text of them has too often perished-theConstitutions of Clarendon, the Grand Assize, the Assizes ofClarendon and Northampton. He professedly legislates bythe counsel and consent of the archbishops, bishops, barons,earls and nobles of England-by the petition and advice ofI Taxatiog and Consetzt 67his bishops and all his barons and so forth. The counsel andconsent may still have been little more than a ceremony-theenacting power was with the king-and he could put in respiteor dispense with the ordinances that were issued. The tyrannyof John after the discipline of Henry was what was needed toturn this right of joining in legislation into a reality. In formthe Charter is a Charter, a free grant by the king, in reality acode of reforming laws passed by the whole body of bishopsand barons and thrust upon a reluctant king.It is not very clear that in theory the consent of thenational council had been necessary for taxation or that ithad been in fact granted. Henry the Second takes a scutageor an aid or a carucage ; the chroniclers do not say that theconsent of his council or his court has been given or asked.The feudal theory that the man makes a free-will offering torelieve the wants of his lord seems to have subsisted; theconsent which theory requires is rather a consent of theindividual taxpayer than that of the national assembly. Thenotion that the majority of an assembly could bind a recalcitrantminority or could bind those who were not presenthad hardly been formed and would have been as unpopular asthe notion that the king himself can extort just what he wants.We begin to hear of opposition to taxation: in I 163 Becketprotests, in I 198 Bishop Hugh of Lincoln. But these protestsof S. Thomas and S. Hugh are rather the protests of individualswho will not pay a tax to which they have not consented,than assertions that the power to tax is vested in the nationalassembly. The necessity however of extending taxationfrom land to movables occasions a new organization anda new order of ideas. The Saladin tithe of I 188 is perhapsthe first attempt to tax personal property1. Henry obtainedfrom a great national council a promise of a tithe for thecrusade ; the assessment in such a case could not be left to atransaction between the individual taxpayer and the royalofficers, so Henry's favourite machinery, a jury of neighbours,was employed; in I 198 this plan was applied to the assessmentof the carucage, the land tax levied on the carucate or plough-1 Select Charters, p. 160.