Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/90

70 quiet under the rule of this king, he became unwilling that that should be paid as a yearly tax which had been exacted by the urgent necessity of a time of war; nor yet, however, on account of unforeseen cases, did he wish it to be entirely omitted. It was occasionally paid, therefore, in his time and in that of his successor: that is, when, from outside nations, wars or rumours of wars arose. But whenever it is paid, those who sit at the exchequer, are free from it, as has been said. The sheriffs too, although they are not counted under the barons of the exchequer, are quit of this for their domains on account of the labour of collecting the tax. Know, moreover, that the domains of any one are called those which are cultivated at his own expense or labour, and likewise those which are possessed by his serfs in his name. For the serfs, according to the law of the kingdom, not only may be transferred by their lords from those places which they now possess to others; but they themselves also are sold or sundered in every possible way; with right they themselves, as well as the lands which they cultivate in order to serve their masters, are considered domains. Likewise it is said by those to whom the ancient dignity of the exchequer was known from what they had seen with their own eyes, that its barons are free, for their domains, of essarts (clearancefines) of the forests. With whom we also agree; adding the reservation, that they may be called quit of those essarts which had been made before the day on which the illustrious king Henry I. bade farewell to human affairs. For if they were quit of all, whenever made or to be made, the barons would seem to be free with impunity, according to their own will and judgment, to cut down their woods, in which the royal forest consists; which they can, in fact, by no means do with impunity, unless the consent of the king or of the chief forester has first been gained. Nay, those who have their domicile in the forest may not take from their own woods what they want for the necessary uses of their homes, unless by view of those who are deputed to guard the forest. But there are many who wish to prove by their arguments that no one, by reason of his seat at the exchequer, is free from these essarts. If any one at all of those sitting there should, by any misfortune,