Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/340

 332 SCUTAOE UNDER EDWARD I July Westminster in July 1297. Those tenants who had performed their service in the armies of the fifth and tenth years claimed, in virtue of that service, to be quit of scutage upon all their fees. No permanent settlement was reached, but it was agreed that all whose names were entered on the marshal's rolls should have respite ' donee Rex inde aliud duxerit ordinandum V and the chancery rolls of the years immediately following contain numerous writs of release and quittance issued, apparently, under this agreement. The compromise of 1297 meant, however, merely a temporary suspension of the question at issue between the exchequer and the Crown vassals. The demands for payment of arrears of scutage seem shortly to have been renewed, for in 1305 the magnates lodged a further complaint that those who had served or fined were being unjustly distrained for scutage * ac si ipsi nullum servicium fecerant '. To this it was answered that the king, in the presence of the whole council, had ordained that a writ should be issued from the chancery to the treasurer and barons directing them to give relief to the complainants, and that the form of the writ should be settled by the council. 2 This writ failed as signally as previous measures had done to procure a final solution of the problem, although it appears to have suspended the collection of the two Welsh scutages during the remainder of the reign of Edward I. After the imposition of the levies for the fifth and tenth years, no further scutage was put in charge until the early years of the fourteenth century. The next full feudal summons was issued on 30 December 1299 in order to create an army for the invasion of Scotland and the recovery of the ground lost since the Falkirk campaign. The muster was held at Carlisle during the last week of June 1300. No official record of the proffers of service made on this occasion is extant, but the number of knights furnished was presumably larger than usual, since the king had issued an urgent appeal to tenants to bring as many men as they could in addition to their customary quotas. 3 The fines taken from tenants who desired to avoid the performance of service were at the unusually 'high rate of 40 or 60 marks the fee, the object perhaps being to induce as many tenants as possible to choose the alternative method of discharging their obligations towards the Crown. The official total of the fines proffered in 1300 is given as 1,975 6s. 8d.* but by no means 1 Exch. Mem. Roll, Lord Treas. Rem., no. 68, Comm. Trin., m. 51 d. 2 Rot. ParL i. 166, no. 73 ; Memoranda de Parliamento, 1305, ed. F. W. Maitland (Rolls Series), pp. 123, 126, Intro, p. liv. 3 Parl. Writs, i. 327-8. 4 Exch. Lord Treas. Rem. Misc., Roll 1/13, m. 1.