Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/344

336 SCUTAOE UNDER EDWARD I July 1306. In spite of the fact that the king, in consideration of the burden upon those who had already been called upon to offer fine or service twice within a short period, directed the exchequer to accept payment at the exceptionally moderate rate of 20 marks the fee, 1 it was subsequently discovered that a large number of tenants had succeeded in evading the summons altogether. On 30 July writs were issued to the sheriffs reciting the failure of certain ecclesiastical and female tenants to offer either service or fine, and ordering them to make strict inquiry as to the number of such persons holding by military tenure in their respective bailiwicks, and to cause them to appear before the exchequer to receive judgement. At the same time orders were given for the distraint of forty lay tenants on a similar charge. 2 Since the summons of 1 306 was a full one the Crown was properly entitled to a scutage. That a levy was contemplated at the end of the reign of Edward I seems clear from the writs de super- sedendo which began to issue from the chancery as early as April 1307, 3 but by the date of the old king's death the collection had not actually been undertaken. It was left for the govern- ment of his successor, when hard pressed for funds wherewith to prosecute the war with Scotland, to impose the scutage due for the army of 1306, and to resume, under new conditions, the suspended collection of the four earlier levies. HELENA M. CHEW. 1 Exch. Lord Treas. Rem. Misc., Roll 1/13, m. 3. 2 Exch. Mem. Roll, Lord Treas. Rem., no. 76, Brev. Ret. Hil., m. 69 d. 3 Ibid. no. 77, Writs to Barons, Easter ; Cal. of Close Rolls, 1302-7, pp. 486, 497.