(2): Scutage.

With regard to scutage, the requirement of consent was something very different. Scutage, in lieu of military service, was of the essence of the feudal relation: to make it impossible for the Crown ever to levy a scutage without consent of those who had to pay, was to go much beyond redress of the grievance suffered under John: it was to impose on him restrictions that his father had never acknowledged.

The total omission of this chapter in 1216 may have been partly occasioned by the consciousness that it contained an innovation unwarranted by custom: the reissue of 1217 said nothing of aids, and contented itself, in regard to the vexed question of scutages, with the vague declaration that for the future these should be taken as had been the custom under Henry II.

In spite, however, of the omission of chapter 12 from all reissues of the Great Charter, it was customary for Henry’s advisers to consult “the Common Council” before exacting a scutage or aid. This was done, for example, in 1222, when a Council granted an “aid for the Holy Land” of three marks for an earl, one mark for a baron, and twelve pence for a knight. The consent of a Council, indeed, was usually taken even for one of the three recognized feudal aids.