I.: Assessment of Reliefs.

Each “incident” had its own possibilities of abuse, and the Great Charter deals with these in turn. The present chapter defines the reliefs to be henceforth paid to John. Vagueness as to the amount due was a natural corollary of doubts as to whether the hereditary principle was binding: the lord took as much as he could grind from the inexperience or timidity of the youthful vassal.

A process of definition, however, was early at work: some conception of a “reasonable relief” was evolved. Yet the criterion varied. Henry I., when bidding against duke Robert for the throne, was willing, in words if not in practice, to accept the limits set by contemporary opinion. His Charter of Liberties promised that reliefs should be “just and lawful”—an elastic phrase, liberally interpreted by exchequer officials in their royal master’s favour. When Glanvill wrote the sums to be taken by mesne lords had been fixed; but the Crown remained free to exact higher rates. Baroniae capitales were charged relief at sums which varied juxta voluntatem et misericordiam domini regis.

Every year, however, made for definition; custom pointed towards 100s. for a knight’s fee, and £100 for a barony. Two entries on the Pipe Roll of 10 Richard I. amusingly illustrate the unsettled practice: £100 is described as a “reasonable relief” for a barony, and yet a second entry records an additional payment by way of “fine” to induce the King to accept the sum his own roll had just declared “reasonable.” John was more openly regardless of reason. The Pipe Roll of 1202 shows how an unfortunate heir failed to get his heritage until he paid 300 marks, with the promise of an annual “acceptable present” to the King.

If John could ask so much, what prevented him asking more? He might name a prohibitive price, and so defeat the hereditability of fiefs altogether. Such arbitrary exactions must end, so the barons were determined in 1215: custom must be defined, so as to prevail henceforth against royal discretion. The first demand of the Articles of the Barons is, “that heirs of full age shall have their heritage by the ancient relief to be set forth in the Charter,” as though the final bargain had not yet been made. Here it is, then, duly set forth and defined as £100 for an “earl’s barony,” £100 for “a baron’s barony,” 100s. for a knight’s fee, and a proportional part of 100s. for every fraction of a knight’s fee. This clause produced the desired effect. These rates were strictly observed by the exchequer of Henry III., as we know from the Pipe Rolls of his reign. Thus, when a certain William Pantoll was charged with £100 for his relief on the mistaken supposition that he had a “barony,” he protested that he held only five knights’ fees, and got off with the payment of £25. The relief of a barony was subsequently reduced from £100 to 100 marks. The date of this change, if we may rely on Madox, lies between the twenty–first and thirty–fifth years of Edward I.

Apparently all who paid reliefs to the King were mulcted in a further payment (calculated at 9 per cent. of the relief) in name of “Queen’s Gold,” to the private purse of the Queen Consort, collected by an official representing her at the exchequer.

The charter here says nothing of socage or serjeanty. (a) Socage. The barons were not vitally interested in socage, that being, in the normal case, the tenure of humbler men. In later reigns the King, like an ordinary mesne lord, contented himself with one year’s rent of socage lands in name of relief. (b) Serjeanty. The barons cannot have been indifferent to the fate of serjeanties, since many of them held great estates by such tenures. Possibly they assumed that the rules applied to knights’ fees and baronies would apply to serjeanties as well. The Crown acted on quite a different view; large sums were frequently extorted by Henry III. By the reign of Edward I., however, the exchequer limited itself to one year’s rent for petty serjeanties, which thus fell into line with socage.