Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/86

66 of five marks which are exacted from their vassals for default, and I prohibit that now from them or their vassals or their lands anything be exacted or received which pertains to money. These being witnesses, there." And in like manner as to the brothers Hospitallers and to the aforesaid monks. By the authority of this mandate, therefore, they will henceforth be quit, throughout the several counties of all things which pertain to money: so that that which we mentioned above may rightly be spoken of in the yearly roll as " remitted by writ of the king."

D. I have understood very well what has been said. Now, if it please thee, do not delay to make clear what are scutage, murdrum and Danegeld. They seem, indeed, to be something barbarous; but they concern me the more for the reason that, as thou sayest, those who minister at the exchequer are free from them.

IX. What Scutage is, and why it is so called.

It happens sometimes that, when the machinations of enemies threaten or attack the kingdom, the king decrees that, from the different knights' fees, a certain sum shall be paid,—a mark, namely, or a pound; and from this come the payments or gifts to the soldiers. For the prince prefers to expose mercenaries, rather than natives to the fortunes of war. And so this sum, which is paid in the name of the shields, is called scutage. From this, moreover, they who sit at the exchequer are quit.

X. What Murder is, and why so called.

Murder (murdrum), indeed, is properly called the secret death of somebody, whose slayer is not known. For "murdrum" means the same as "hidden" or " occult."

Now in the primitive state of the kingdom after the Conquest those who were left of the Anglo-Saxon subjects secretly laid ambushes for the suspected and hated race of the Normans, and, here and there, when opportunity offered, killed them secretly in the woods and in remote places: as vengeance for whom—when the kings and their ministers had for some years, with exquisite kinds of tortures, raged against the Anglo-Saxons; and they,