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Data Visualization with
Python and JavaScript
Scrape, Clean, Explore &
Transform Your Data

Kyran Dale
Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript
by Kyran Dale
Copyright © 2016 Kyran Dale. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway
North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business,
or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available
for most titles (http://oreilly.com/safari). For more
information, contact our corporate/institutional sales
department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected].
Editors: Dawn Schanafelt and
Meghan Blanchette

Production Editor: Kristen Brown

Copyeditor: Gillian McGarvey

Proofreader: Rachel Monaghan

Indexer: Judith McConville

Interior Designer: David Futato

Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery

Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest

July 2016: First Edition

Revision History for the First Edition
2016-06-29: First Release

2017-03-17: Second Release

See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?
isbn=9781491920510 for release details.
The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media,
Inc. Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript, the cover
image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly
Media, Inc.
While the publisher and the author have used good faith
efforts to ensure that the information and instructions
contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the
author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions,
including without limitation responsibility for damages
resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the
information and instructions contained in this work is at
your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this
work contains or describes is subject to open source
licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is
your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies
with such licenses and/or rights.
978-1-491-92051-0
[LSI]
Preface

The chief ambition of this book is to describe a data

visualization (dataviz) toolchain that, in the era of the
Internet, is starting to predominate. The guiding principle of
this toolchain is that whatever insightful nuggets you have
managed to mine from your data deserve a home on the
web browser. Being on the Web means you can easily
choose to distribute your dataviz to a select few (using
authentication or restricting to a local network) or the whole
world. This is the big idea of the Internet and one that
dataviz is embracing at a rapid pace. And that means that
the future of dataviz involves JavaScript, the only first-class
language of the web browser. But JavaScript does not yet
have the data-processing stack needed to refine raw data,
which means data visualization is inevitably a multi-
language affair. I hope this book provides ammunition for
my belief that Python is the natural complementary
language to JavaScript’s monopoly of browser visualizations.
Although this book is a big one (that fact is felt most keenly
by the author right now), it has had to be very selective,
leaving out a lot of very cool Python and JavaScript dataviz
tools and focusing on the ones I think provide the best
building blocks. The number of cool libraries I couldn’t cover
reflects the enormous vitality of the Python and JavaScript
data science ecosystems. Even while the book was being
written, brilliant new Python and JavaScript libraries were
being introduced, and the pace continues.
I wanted to give the book some narrative structure by
setting a data transformation challenge. All data
visualization is essentially transformative, and showing the
journey from one reflection of a dataset (HTML tables and
lists) to a more modern, engaging, interactive, and,
fundamentally, browser-based one seemed a good way to
introduce key data visualization tools in a working context.
The challenge I set was to transform a basic Wikipedia list of
Nobel Prize winners into a modern, interactive, browser-
based visualization. Thus the same dataset is presented in a
more accessible, engaging form. But while the creation of
the Nobel visualization lent the book a backbone, there were
calculated redundancies. For example, although the book
uses Flask and the MongoDB-based Python-EVE API to
deliver the Nobel data to the browser, I also show how to do
it with the SQL-based Flask-RESTless. If you work in the field
of dataviz, you will need to be able to engage with both SQL
and NoSQL databases, and this book aims to be impartial.
Not every library demonstrated was used in transforming
the Nobel dataset, but all are ones I have found most useful
personally and think you will, too.
So the book is a collection of tools forming a chain, with the
creation of the Nobel visualization providing a guiding
narrative. You should be able to dip into relevant chapters
when and if the need arises; the different parts of the book
are self-contained so you can quickly review what you’ve
learned when required.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this
book:

Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames,
and file extensions.
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs
to refer to program elements such as variable or
function names, databases, datatypes, environment
variables, statements, and keywords.
Constant width bold
Shows commands or other text that should be typed
literally by the user.
Constant width italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied
values or by values determined by context.

TIP
This element signifies a tip or suggestion.

NOTE
This element signifies a general note.
 WARNING
This element indicates a warning or caution.
Using Code Examples
Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is
available for download at https://github.com/Kyrand/dataviz-
with-python-and-js.
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general,
if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in
your programs and documentation. You do not need to
contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a
significant portion of the code. For example, writing a
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does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-
ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require
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Incorporating a significant amount of example code from
this book into your product’s documentation does require
permission.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution
usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For
example: “Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript by
Kyran Dale (O’Reilly). Copyright 2016 Kyran Dale, 978-1-
491-92051-0.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use
or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at
[email protected].
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How to Contact Us
Please address comments and questions concerning this
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Acknowledgments
Thanks first to Meghan Blanchette, who set the ball rolling
and steered that ball through its first very rough chapters.
Dawn Schanafelt then took the helm and did the bulk of the
very necessary editing. Kristen Brown did a brilliant job
taking the book through production, aided by Gillian
McGarvey’s impressively tenacious copy editing. Working
with such talented, dedicated professionals has been an
honor and a privilege — and an education: the book would
have been so much easier to write if I’d known then what I
know now. Isn’t that always the way?
Many thanks to Amy Zielinski for making the author look
better than he deserves.
The book benefited from some very helpful feedback. So
much thanks to Christophe Viau, Tom Parslow, Peter Cook,
Ian Macinnes, and Ian Ozsvald.
I’d also like to thank the valiant bug hunters who answered
my appeal during Early Release. At time of writing, these
are Douglas Kelley, Pavel Suk, Brigham Hausman, Marco
Hemken, Noble Kennamer, Manfredi Biasutti, Matthew
Maldonado, and Geert Bauwens.
Introduction

This book aims to get you up to speed with what is, in my

opinion, the most powerful data visualization stack going:
Python and JavaScript. You’ll learn enough about big
libraries like Pandas and D3 to start crafting your own web
data visualizations and refining your own toolchain.
Expertise will come with practice, but this book presents a
shallow learning curve to basic competence.

NOTE
If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please
post it to [email protected]. Thanks a lot.
You’ll also find a working copy of the Nobel visualization the book
literally and figuratively builds toward at
http://kyrandale.com/static/pyjsdataviz/index.html.

The bulk of this book tells one of the innumerable tales of

data visualization, one carefully selected to showcase some
powerful Python and JavaScript libraries and tools which
together form a toolchain. This toolchain gathers raw,
unrefined data at its start and delivers a rich, engaging web
visualization at its end. Like all tales of data visualization, it
is a tale of transformation — in this case, transforming a
basic Wikipedia list of Nobel Prize winners into an interactive
visualization, bringing the data to life and making
exploration of the prize’s history easy and fun.
A primary motivation for writing the book is the belief that,
whatever data you have and whatever story you want to tell
with it, the natural home for the visualizations you
transform it into is the Web. As a delivery platform, it is
orders of magnitude more powerful than what came before,
and this book aims to smooth the passage from desktop- or
server-based data analysis and processing to getting the
fruits of that labor out on the Web.
But the most ambitious aim of this book is to persuade you
that working with these two powerful languages toward the
goal of delivering powerful web visualizations is actually fun
and engaging.
I think many potential dataviz programmers assume there is
a big divide between web development and doing what they
would like to do, which is program in Python and JavaScript.
Web development involves loads of arcane knowledge about
markup languages, style scripts, and administration, and
can’t be done without tools with strange names like Gulp or
Yeoman. I aim to show that, these days, that big divide can
be collapsed to a thin and very permeable membrane,
allowing you to focus on what you do well: programming
stuff (see Figure P-1) with minimal effort, relegating the web
servers to data delivery.
Figure P-1. Here be webdev dragons
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
sheriff, castellan, and bailiff. Far from using the perfected machinery
of Exchequer, Curia, and local administration in the interests of good
government, John valued them merely as instruments of extortion
and outrage—as ministers to his lust and greed.
The lower orders were by no means exempt from the increased
taxation which proved so galling to the feudal tenants. When John,
during his quarrel with Rome, repaid each new anathema of the
Pope by fresh acts of spoliation against the national Church, the
sufferings of the clergy were shared by the poor. In confiscating the
goods of the monasteries, he destroyed the chief provision for poor-
relief known to the thirteenth century. The alienation of the
affections of the great masses of lower-class Englishmen thus
effected was never wholly undone, even by the reconciliation of John
with the Pope. Notwithstanding the completeness and even
abjectness of John’s surrender to Rome, he took no special pains to
reinstate himself in the good graces of the Church at home.
Innocent, secure at the Lateran, had issued his thunderbolts; and
John’s counter-strokes had fallen, not on him, but on the English
clergy—from the prelate to the parish priest, from the abbot to the
humblest monk. The measures taken, in 1213 and afterwards, to
make good to these victims some part of the heavy losses sustained,
were quite inadequate. The interests of the Church universal were
often widely different from those of the national Church, and such
diversity was never more clearly marked than in the last years of the
reign of John.
After 1213, John’s alliance with Rome brought new dangers in its
train. The united action of two tyrants, each claiming supreme
powers, lay and spiritual respectively, threatened to exterminate the
freedom of the English nation and the English Church. “The country
saw that the submission of John to Innocent placed its liberty,
temporally and spiritually, at his mercy; and immediately demanded
safeguards.”[63]
This union of tyrants naturally led to another union which
checkmated it, for the baronial opposition allied itself with the
ecclesiastical opposition. The urgency of their common need thus
brought prelates and barons into line—for the moment. The
necessary leader was found in Stephen Langton, who succeeded in
preventing the somewhat divergent interests of the two estates from
leading them in opposite directions.
All things were thus ripe for rebellion, and even for united
rebellion; an opportunity only was required. Such an opportunity
came in a tempting form in 1214; for the King had then lost prestige
and power by his failure in the wars with France. He had lost the
confidence of his subjects by his quarrel with Rome, and he failed to
regain it by his reconciliation. He had lost the friendship of the
national Church. His unpopularity and vacillating nature had been
thoroughly demonstrated. Finally he had himself, in 1191, when
plotting against his absent brother Richard, successfully attacked
and ousted the Regent Longchamp from office, thus furnishing an
example of rebellion, and of successfully concerted action against
the central government.
The result was that, when the barons—the wildest spirits of the
northern counties taking always the lead—began active operations at
a juncture of John’s fortunes most favourable to their aspirations,
not only had they no opposition to dread from churchman or
merchant, from yeoman or peasant, but they might count on the
sympathy of all and the active co-operation of many. Further, John’s
policy of misrule had combined against him two interests usually
opposed to each other, the party of progress and the party of
reaction. The influence of each of these may be clearly read in the
various chapters of Magna Carta.
The progressive party consisted mainly of the heads of the more
recently created baronial houses, men trained in the administrative
methods of Henry II., who desired merely that the system of
government they knew should be properly enforced and carried out
to its logical conclusions. They demanded chiefly that the King
should conduct the business of the Exchequer and Curia according
to the rules laid down by Henry II. Routine and order under the new
system were what this party desired, and not a return to the unruly
days of Stephen. Many of the innovations of the great Angevin had
now been loyally and finally accepted by all classes of the nation;
and these accordingly found a permanent resting-place in the
provisions of the Great Charter. In temporary co-operation with this
party, the usually rival party of reaction was willing to act for the
moment against the common enemy. There still existed in John’s
reign magnates of the old feudal school, who hoped to wrest from
the weakened hand of the King some measure of feudal
independence. They had indeed accepted such reforms as suited
them, but still bitterly opposed many others. In particular, they
resisted the encroachments of the royal courts of law which were
gradually superseding their private jurisdictions. For the moment,
John’s crafty policy, so well devised to gain immediate ends, and so
unwise in the light of subsequent history, combined these two
streams, usually ready to thwart each other, into a united opposition
to his throne. Attacked at the same moment by the votaries of
traditional usage and by the votaries of reform, by the barons, the
trading classes, and the clergy, no course was left him but to
surrender at discretion. The movement which culminated at
Runnymede may thus best be understood as the resultant of a
number of different but converging forces, some of which were
progressive and some reactionary.

60. The Great Charter, p. vii.

61. Several of the most often-repeated charges of personal

wrongs inflicted by King John upon the wives and daughters of his
barons have been in recent years refuted. See Miss Norgate, John
Lackland, p. 289.

62. See infra the two sections (II. and III.) immediately following.

63. Stubbs, Select Charters, 270.

 II. The Crown and Feudal Obligations.
Among the many evils calling loudly for redress in England at the
commencement of the thirteenth century, none spoke with more
insistent voice than those connected with feudal abuses. The
objection of the northern barons to pay the scutage demanded on
26th May, 1214, was the spark that fired the mine. The most
prominent feature of the Charter is the solicitude everywhere
displayed to define the exact extent of feudal services and dues, and
to prevent these from being arbitrarily increased. A somewhat
detailed knowledge of feudalism and feudal obligations forms a
necessary preliminary to any exact study of Magna Carta.
The precise relations of the Norman Conquest to the growth of
feudalism in England are complicated, and have formed the subject
of much controversy. The view now generally accepted, and with
reason, is that the policy of William the Conqueror accelerated the
process in one direction, but retarded it in another. Feudalism,
regarded as a system of government, had its worst tendencies
checked, if not eradicated, by the great upheaval that followed the
coming of Duke William; feudalism, considered as a system of land
tenure, and as a social system, was, on the contrary, formulated and
developed. It is mainly as a system of land tenure that it falls here to
be considered. Originally, the relationship between lord and tenant,
dependent upon the double ownership of land (of which each was,
in a different sense, the proprietor), implied obligations on both
sides. The lord gave protection, while the tenant owed services of
various sorts. It so happened, however, that, with the changes
wrought by time, the legal obligations of the lord ceased to be of
much importance, while those of the vassal became more and more
burdensome. The tenant’s obligations varied in kind and in extent
with the nature of the tenure. It is difficult to frame an exact list of
the various tenures formerly recognized as distinct in English law:
partly because the classical authors of different epochs, from
Bracton to Blackstone, contradict each other; and partly because of
the obscurity of the process by which these tenures were gradually
differentiated. The word “tenure” originally meant “a holding” of any
sort. Sir William Blackstone,[64] after explaining the dependent nature
of all real property in England, thus proceeds: “The thing holden is
therefore styled a tenement, the possessors thereof tenants, and the
manner of their possession a tenure.” Tenure thus comes to mean
the conditions on which a tenant holds real estate under his lord,
and the number of tenures varies with the number of accepted
types.
The ancient classification differs materially from that in use at the
present day. The modern English lawyer (unless of an antiquarian
turn of mind) concerns himself only with three tenures: freehold
(now practically identical with socage), copyhold and leasehold. The
two last-mentioned may be rapidly dismissed, as they were of little
importance in the eyes of Littleton, or of Coke: leasehold embraces
only temporary interests, such as those of a tenant-at-will or for a
limited term of years; while copyhold is the modern form of tenure
into which the old unfree villeinage has slowly ripened. The ancient
writers were, on the contrary, chiefly concerned with holdings both
permanent and free (as opposed to leaseholds on the one hand and
villeinage on the other). Of such free tenures seven at least may be
distinguished in the thirteenth century, all of which have now come
to be represented by the same one of the three recognized modern
tenures, namely, freehold or socage. The free holdings existing in
medieval England may be ranged under the following heads, viz.:
knight’s service, free socage, fee-farm, frankalmoin, grand serjeanty,
petty serjeanty, and burgage.
(1) Knight’s Service. Medieval feudalism had many aspects; it was
almost as essentially an engine of war as it was a system of land-
holding. The normal return for which an estate was granted
consisted of the service in the field of a specific number of knights.
Thus the normal feudal holding was known as knight’s service, or
tenure in chivalry—the conditions of which must be constantly kept
in view, since by these rules the relations between John and his
recalcitrant vassals fell to be determined. When finally abolished at
the Restoration, there fell with knight’s service, it is not too much to
say, the feudal system of land tenure in England. “Tenure by barony”
is sometimes spoken of as a separate species, but may be more
correctly viewed as a variety of tenure in chivalry.[65]
(2) Free Socage. The early history of socage, with its division into
ordinary and privileged, is involved in obscurities which do not
require to be unravelled for the purpose at present on hand. The
services which had to be returned for both varieties were not military
but agricultural, and their exact nature, and amount varied
considerably. Although not so honourable as chivalry, free socage
was less burdensome in respect that two of the most irksome of the
feudal incidents, wardship and marriage, did not apply. When
knight’s service was abolished those who had previously held their
lands by it, whether under the Crown or under a mesne lord, were
henceforward to hold in free socage, which thus came to be the
normal holding throughout England after the Restoration.[66]
(3) Fee-farm was the name applied to lands held in return for
services which were neither military nor agricultural, but consisted
only of an annual payment in money. The “farm” thus indicates the
rent paid, which apparently might vary without limit, although it was
long maintained that a fee-farm rent must amount at least to one
quarter of the annual value. This error seems to have been founded
on a misconstruction of the Statute of Gloucester.[67] Some
authorities[68] reject the claims of fee-farm to rank as a tenure
separate from socage; although chapter 37 of Magna Carta seems to
recognize the distinction.
(4) Frankalmoin is the tenure by which pious founders granted
lands to the uses of a religious house. It was also the tenure on
which the great majority of glebe lands throughout England were
held by the village priests, the parsons of parish churches. The grant
was usually declared to have been made in liberam eleemosinam or
“free alms” (that is, as a free gift for which no temporal services
were to be rendered).[69] In Scots charters the return formally
stipulated was preces et lacrymae (the prayers and tears of the holy
men of the foundation for the soul of the founder).
 (5) Grand serjeanty was a highly honourable tenure sharing the
distinctions and the burdensome incidents of knight’s service, but
distinct in this, that the tenant, in place of ordinary military duties,
performed some specific office in the field, such as carrying the
King’s banner or lance, or else acted as his constable or marshal or
other household officer in the palace, or performed some important
service at the coronation.[70]
An often-quoted example of a serjeanty is that of Sir John Dymoke
and his family, who have acted as the Sovereign’s champions at
successive coronations from Richard II. to Queen Victoria, ready to
defend the Monarch’s title to the throne, if questioned, by battle in
the ancient form.
Grand serjeanties were liable to wardship and marriage, as well as
to relief, but not, as a rule, to payment of scutage.[71] William
Aguilon, we are told by Madox,[72] "was charged at the Exchequer
with several escuages. But when it was found by Inquest of twelve
Knights of Surrey that he did not hold his lands in that county by
military tenure, but by serjeanty of finding a Cook at the King’s
coronation to dress victuals in the King’s kitchen, he was acquitted of
the escuages."
(6) Petty serjeanty may be described in the words of Littleton as
“where a man holds his lands of our lord the king to yield to him
yearly a bow or sword, or a dagger or a knife ... or to yield such
other small things belonging to war.”[73]
The grant of lands on such privileged tenures was frequently
made in early days on account of the special favour entertained by
the King for the original grantee, due, it might be, to the memory of
some great service rendered at a critical juncture to the King’s
person or interests. A few illustrative examples may be cited from
the spirited description of a scholar whose accuracy can be relied
upon. Serjeanties, as Miss Bateson tells us, "were neither always
military nor always agricultural, but might approach very closely the
service of knights or the service of farmers.... The serjeanty of
holding the King’s head when he made a rough passage across the
Channel, of pulling a rope when his vessel landed, of counting his
chessmen on Christmas Day, of bringing fuel to his castle, of doing
his carpentry, of finding his potherbs, of forging his irons for his
ploughs, of tending his garden, of nursing the hounds gored and
injured in the hunt, of serving as veterinary to his sick falcons, such
and many other might be the ceremonial or menial services due
from a given serjeanty."[74]
In the days before legal definition had done its work, it must often
have been difficult to say on which side of the line separating Petty
Serjeanties from Grand Serjeanties any particular holding fell.
Gradually, however, important and practical distinctions were
established, making it necessary that the boundary should be
defined with accuracy. In particular, the rule was established that
Petty Serjeanties, while liable for relief, were exempt altogether from
the burdensome incidents of wardship and marriage, which Grand
Serjeanties shared with lands held by ordinary Barony or Knight’s
service.[75] Thus the way was prepared for the practical identification
of the Petty Serjeanties with ordinary socage at a later date.
(7) Burgage, confined exclusively to lands within free boroughs, is
mentioned as a separate tenure by Littleton,[76] and his authority
receives support from the words of chapter 37 of Magna Carta. Our
highest modern authorities,[77] however, consider that it never
acquired sufficiently distinct characteristics to warrant its
acknowledgment as such. They treat it rather as a special variety of
socage, used where the tenants were the members of a corporation.
If their opinion must be accepted for England, it follows that, from
common antecedents, entirely different results have developed in
Scotland and in England respectively. While, north of the Tweed,
several of the well-established English tenures have failed to make
good their right to separate recognition, burgage has established
itself beyond a doubt. Even the levelling process consummated by
the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act of 1874 has not entirely abolished
its separate existence.
The explanation of such differences between English and Scottish
usage easily suggests itself. When feudalism first took root, the
various shades of distinction in the conditions of holding were
exceedingly numerous, and merged into one another by
imperceptible degrees. The work of definition came later, was
essentially artificial in its nature, and assumed different forms in
different lands.[78]
These tenures, originally six or seven (according as we exclude or
include burgage), have yielded to the unifying pressure of many
centuries. Frankalmoin and Grand Serjeanty still exist, but rather as
ghosts than realities; the others have all been swallowed up in
socage, which has thus become practically identical with “free-
hold.”[79] This triumph of socage is the result of a long process. Fee-
farm, burgage, and petty serjeanty, always possessing many
features in common, were gradually assimilated in almost all
respects, while a statute (12 Charles II. c. 24) transformed tenure in
chivalry also into socage. The once humble socage has thus risen
high, and now embraces most of the land of England.[80]
The interest of historians naturally centres round tenure by
knight’s service, which is the very kernel of the feudal system. Lack
of definition in the middle ages was a fruitful source of quarrel. For a
century and more after the Norman Conquest, the exact amount and
nature of the military services due by a tenant to his lord were left
vague and undetermined. The early Norman Kings had gradually
superseded the old Anglo-Saxon Crown tenants by new ones of
Norman or French extraction, without formulating any code of
regulations for the future. The whole of England had thus been
carved into a number of estates—the larger known as honours or
baronies, and the smaller as manors. Each Crown tenant (with two
exceptions, of which the Conqueror’s favourite foundation of Battle
Abbey was one) held his lands on condition of furnishing a certain
number of fully armed and mounted soldiers, always ready to obey
the King’s summons in the event of war. High authorities differ as to
when and by whom the amount of each vassal’s service was fixed.
The common view (promulgated by Prof. Freeman[81] with his usual
vehemence), attributes the allocation of specific service to Ranulf
Flambard, the unscrupulous tool of William Rufus. Mr. J. H. Round[82]
has recently urged convincing reasons in support of the older view
which attributes it to William I. Two facts, apparently, are certain:
that within half a century from the Conquest each military tenant
was burdened with a definite amount of knight’s service; and,
further, that no formal record of the amount of such service was
made at the time. There were, as yet, no written charters, and thus
the possibility of disputes remained. Probably such grants would be
made in full Curia, and the only record of the conditions would lie in
the memory of the Court itself.
Long before the date of Magna Carta, the various obligations had
been grouped into three classes, which may be arranged according
to their relative importance, as services, incidents, and aids. Under
each of these three heads, disputes continually arose between the
lord who exacted and the vassal who rendered them.[83]
The very essence of the feudal relation between the King as
overlord and the Crown tenant as vassal consisted in the liability of
the latter to render “suit and service,” that is, to follow his lord’s
banner in time of war, and to attend his court in time of peace. It
will be more convenient, however, to reserve full consideration of
these services until the comparatively uncomplicated obligations
known as incidents and aids have been first discussed.
I. Feudal Incidents. In addition to “suit and service,” the lord
reaped, at the expense of his tenants, a number of casual profits,
which thus formed irregular supplements to his revenue. These
profits, accruing, not annually, but on the occurrence of exceptional
events, came to be known as “feudal incidents.” They were gradually
defined with more or less accuracy, and their number may be given
as six, viz.:
Reliefs, Escheats, Wardships, Marriages, Primer seisins, and Fines
for Alienation.[84]
(a) Relief is easily explained. The fee, or feudum, or hereditary
feudal estate, seems to have been the result of a gradual evolution
from the old beneficium (or estate held merely for one lifetime), and
that again from the older precarium (or estate held only during the
will of the overlord). Grants of land, originally subject to revocation
by the lord, had gradually attained fixity of tenure throughout the life
of the original grantee; and, later on, they became transmissible to
his descendants. The hereditary principle at last completely
triumphed; the Capitulary of Kiersey (A.D. 877) is said to be the first
authoritative recognition of the heir’s absolute right to succeed. The
process was a gradual one, and it would seem that even after the
Norman Conquest, this rule of hereditary descent was not
established beyond possibility of dispute.[85] This right of the heir to
succeed always remained subject to one condition, namely, the
payment of a sum of money known as “relief.” This was theoretically
an acknowledgment that the new tenant’s right to ownership was
incomplete, until recognized by his superior—a reminiscence of the
earlier precarium from which the feudum had developed.
Relief, then, is the sum payable to a feudal overlord by an heir for
recognition of his title to succeed the last tenant in possession. The
amount remained long undefined, and the lord frequently asked
exorbitant sums.[86]
(b) Escheat, it has been said, "signifies the return of an estate to a
lord, either on failure of issue from the tenant or upon account of
such tenant’s felony."[87] This lucid description conveys a good
general conception of escheat; but it is inaccurate in at least two
respects. It does not exhaust the occasions on which escheat occurs,
and it errs in speaking of “the return” of an estate to a lord, when,
more accurately, that estate had never left him, but always remained
his property, subject only to a burden, which was now removed. In
theory, the feudal grant of lands was always conditional; and when
the condition was broken, the grant fell, and the lord found himself,
automatically as it were, once more the absolute unburdened
proprietor, as he had been before the grant was made. Thereafter,
he held the land in demesne, unless he chose to make a new grant
to another tenant. The word “escheat” was applied indifferently to
the lord’s right to such reversions, and to the actual lands which had
thus reverted. In warlike and unsettled times the right was a
valuable one, for whole families might become rapidly extinct. When
the last tenant left no heir, it was obvious that the original grant had
exhausted itself. Similarly, when a landholder was convicted of
felony, his blood became, in the phrase of a later day, attainted, and
no one could succeed to any estate through him. If a man failed in
the ordeal of water provided by the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 for
those accused of heinous crimes, his estates also escheated to his
lord. It is true that a complication arose when it was of treason that
the tenant had been convicted. In that case the king, as the injured
party, had prior rights which excluded those of the lord. The lands of
traitors were forfeited to the Crown. Even in the case of felony the
king had a limited right to the lands during a period which was
strictly defined by Magna Carta.[88]
The tenant’s felony and failure of issue were the two main
grounds of escheat, but not the only ones; the goods of fugitives
from justice and of those who had been formally outlawed also
escheated, and Glanvill adds another case,[89] namely, female wards
guilty of unchastity (an offence which spoiled the king’s market).
Failure to obey a summons to the feudal levy in time of war might
also be made a ground of forfeiture.[90]
Escheat was thus a peculiarly valuable right both to the Crown and
to mesne lords. Its effect was simply this: one link in the feudal
chain was struck out, and the links on either side were fitted
together. If the defaulter was a Crown tenant, all his former sub-
tenants, whether freeholders or villeins, moved up one rung in the
feudal ladder and held henceforward directly of the king, who
enjoyed the entire complexus of legal rights previously enjoyed by
the defaulter in addition to those previously enjoyed by himself:
rents, crops, timber, casual profits, and advowsons of churches
falling vacant; jurisdictions and the profits of jurisdictions; services
of villeins; reliefs, wardships, and marriages of freeholders as these
became exigible.
The Crown, however, while taking everything the defaulter might
have taken before default, must take nothing more—so at least
Magna Carta[91] provides. The rights and status of innocent sub-
tenants must not be prejudiced by the misdeeds of their defaulting
mesne lord.
(c) Wardships are described in the Dialogus de Scaccario as
“escheats along with the heir” (escaeta cum herede).[92] This
expression does not occur elsewhere, but it would be impossible to
find any description of wardship which throws more light on its
nature and consequences. When the heir of a deceased tenant was
unfitted to bear arms by reason of his tender years, the lands were
practically, during his minority, without an effective owner. The lord
accordingly treated them as temporarily escheated. During the
interval of nonage, the lord entered into possession, drew the
revenues, and applied them to his own purposes, subject only to the
obligation of maintaining and training the heir in a manner suited to
his station in life. Frequently, considerable sums were thus spent.
The Pipe Roll of the seventeenth year of Henry II. shows how out of
a total revenue of £50 6s. 8d. from the Honour of “Belveeir,” £18 5s.
had been expended on the children of the late tenant.[93] Wardship
came to an end with the full age of the ward, that is, in the case of a
military tenant, on the completion of his twenty-first year, “in that of
a holder in socage on the completion of the fifteenth, and in the
case of a burgess when the boy can count money, measure cloth,
and so forth.”[94] Wardship of females normally ended at the age of
fourteen, "because that a woman of such age may have a husband
able to do knight’s service."[95]
All the remunerative consequences flowing from escheat flowed
also from wardship—rents, casual profits, advowsons, services of
villeins, and reliefs. Unlike escheats, however, the right of the Crown
here was only temporary, and Magna Carta sought[96] to provide that
the implied conditions should be respected by the Crown’s bailiffs or
nominees. The lands must not be wasted or exhausted, but restored
to the young owner when he came of age in as good condition as
they had been at the commencement of the wardship.
One important aspect of this right ought to be specially
emphasized. The Crown’s wardship affected bishoprics as well as lay
baronies, extending over the temporalities of a See between the
death of one prelate and the instalment of his successor. Thus, it
was to the king’s interest to place obstacles in the way of all
appointments to vacant sees, since the longer the delay, the longer
the Exchequer drew the revenues and casual profits.[97]
This right was carefully reserved to the Crown, even in the very
comprehensive charter in which John granted freedom of election,
dated 21st November, 1214.[98]
(d) Marriage as a feudal incident belonging to the lord is difficult
to define generally, since its meaning changed. Originally it seems to
have implied little more than the right of a lord to forbid an heiress,
holding a fief under him, to marry a personal enemy, or some one
otherwise unsuitable. Such veto was only reasonable, since the
husband of the heiress would become the owner of the fee and the
tenant of the lord. This negative right had almost necessarily a
positive side; the claim to concur in the choice of a husband
gradually expanded into an absolute right of the lord to dispose by
sale or otherwise of the lands and person of his female ward. The
prize might go as a bribe to any unscrupulous gentleman of fortune
who placed his sword at the King’s disposal, or it might be made the
subject of auction to the highest bidder. The lady passed as a mere
adjunct to her own estates, and ceased, strictly speaking, to have
any voice in choosing a partner for life. She might protect herself
indeed against an obnoxious husband by out-bidding her various
suitors. Large sums were frequently paid for leave to marry a
specified individual or to remain single.
This right seems, at some uncertain date, to have been extended
from females to males, and instances of sums thus paid occur in the
Pipe Rolls. It is difficult at first sight to imagine how the Crown found
a market for such wares as male wards; but probably wealthy
fathers were ready to purchase desirable husbands for their
daughters. Thus in 1206 a certain Henry of Redeman paid forty
marks for the hand and lands of the heir of Roger of Hedon, “ad
opus filiae suae,”[99] while Thomas Basset secured a prize in the
person of the young heir of Walerand, Earl of Warwick, to the use of
any one of his daughters.[100] This extension to male heirs is usually
explained to have been founded on a strained construction of
chapter 6 of Magna Carta, but the beginnings of the practice can be
traced much earlier than 1215.[101] The lords’ right to sell their wards
was recognized and defined by the Statute of Merton, chapter 6. The
attempts made to remedy some of the most serious abuses of the
practice may be read in Magna Carta.[102]
Mr. Hallam[103] considers that “the rights, or feudal incidents, of
wardship and marriage were nearly peculiar to England and
Normandy,” and that the French kings[104] never “turned this attribute
of sovereignty into a means of revenue.”
 (e) Primer Seisin, which is usually regarded as a separate incident,
and figures as such in Blackstone’s list, is perhaps better understood,
not as an incident at all, but rather as a special procedure—effective
and summary—whereby the Crown could enforce the four incidents
already described. It was an exclusive prerogative of the Crown,
denied to mesne lords.[105] When a Crown tenant died, the King’s
officers had the right to enter upon immediate possession, and to
exclude the heir, who could not touch his father’s lands without
specific permission from the Crown. He had first to prove his title by
inquest, to give security for any balance of relief and other debts
unpaid, and to perform homage.[106] It will be readily seen what a
strong strategic position all this assured to the King in any disputes
with the heir of a dead vassal. If the Exchequer had doubtful claims
against the deceased, its officials could satisfy themselves before
admitting the heir to possession. If the heir showed any tendency to
evade payment of feudal incidents, the Crown could checkmate his
moves. If the succession was disputed, the King might favour the
claimant who pleased or paid him most; or, under colour of the
dispute, refuse to disgorge the estate altogether—holding it in
custody analogous to wardship, and meanwhile drawing the profits.
If the son and heir happened to be from home when his father died,
he would probably experience great difficulty, when he returned, in
forcing the Crown to restore the estates. Such was the experience of
William Fitz-Odo on returning from Scotland in 1201 to claim his
father’s carucate of land in Bamborough.[107] Primer seisin was thus
not so much a separate incident, as a right peculiar to the Crown to
take summary measures for the satisfaction of all incidents or other
claims against a deceased tenant or his heir. Magna Carta admitted
this prerogative whilst guarding against its abuse.[108]
(f) Fines for alienation occupy a place by themselves. Unlike other
incidents already discussed, they became exigible not on the
tenant’s death, but on his wishing to part with his estate to another
during his own lifetime, either as a gift or in return for a price. How
far could he effect this without consent of his lord? This was, for
many centuries, a subject of frequent and heated disputes, often
settled by compromises, in which the tenant paid a fine to the lord
for permission to sell. Such fines are payable at the present day in
Scotland (under the name of “compositions”) from feus granted prior
to 1874; and, where no sum has been mentioned in the Feu Charter,
the law of Scotland defines the amount exigible as one year’s rent.
John’s Magna Carta contains no provisions on this subject. Disputes,
long and bitter, took place later in the thirteenth century; but their
history is irrelevant to the present inquiry.[109]
II. Feudal Aids. The feudal tenant, in addition to fulfilling all the
essentials of the feudal relation and also all the burdensome
incidents already enumerated, was expected to come to the aid of
his lord in any special crisis or emergency. The help thus rendered
was by no means reckoned as a payment to account of the other
obligations, which had also to be paid in full. The additional sums
thus given were technically known as “aids.” At first, the occasions
on which these might be demanded were varied and undefined.
Gradually, however, they were limited to three. Glanvill,[110] indeed,
mentions only two, namely, the knighting of the overlord’s eldest
son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter; but he intends these,
perhaps, merely as illustrations rather than as forming an exhaustive
list. Before the beginning of the thirteenth century the recognized
aids were clearly three—the ransoming of the king and the two
already mentioned. This understanding was embodied in Magna
Carta.[111]
A tradition has been handed down from an early date, that these
aids were in reality voluntary offerings made by the tenant as a mark
of affection, and forming no part of his legal obligations.[112]
This plainly became, however, a legal fiction, as regarded the aids
acknowledged by customary law; the tenant dared not refuse to pay
the recognized three. As regarded any further payments, it was by
no means a fiction. When the Crown desired to exact contributions
for any other reason, it required to obtain the consent of the
commune concilium. This, for example, was done by Henry III.
before taking an aid on the marriage of his eldest sister. The
importance of the necessity for such consent can hardly be
exaggerated in its bearing on the origin of the rights of Parliament.
 The Great Charter, while confirming the tacit compromise arrived
at by custom, whereby only the three aids might be taken without
consent of the baronage, left the amount of such aids undefined,
contenting itself with the extremely vague provision that they should
be “reasonable.” Examples of such payments, both before and after
the Charter, are readily found in the Exchequer Rolls. Thus, in the
fourteenth year of Henry II., that king took one mark per knight’s
fee on marrying his daughter Maud to the Duke of Saxony. Henry
III. took 20s. and Edward I. 40s. for a similar purpose. For Richard’s
ransom, 20s. had been exacted from each knight’s fee (save those
owned by men actually serving in the field); and Henry III. took 40s.
in his thirty-eighth year at the knighting of his son. Probably there
existed, at an early date, some understanding as to the limits within
which “reasonableness” should be reckoned, but the amount was
never stated in black and white before the third year of Edward I.
The Statute of Westminster I.[113] fixed the “reasonable” aid payable,
not to the Crown but, to mesne lords at 20s. per knight’s fee, and
20s. for every estate in socage of £20 annual value. This rate, it will
be observed, is one-fifth of the knight’s relief.[114] The Crown, in thus
enforcing “reason” on mesne lords, seems never to have intended
that the same limit should hamper its own dealings with Crown
tenants, but continued to exact larger sums whenever it thought fit.
[115]

Thus £2 per fee was taken in 1346 at the knighting of the Black
Prince. A Statute of Edward III.[116] at last extended to the Crown
the same measure of “reasonableness” as had been applied three-
quarters of a century earlier to mesne lords. The last instances of
the exaction of aids in England occur as late as the reign of James I.,
who, in 1609, demanded one for the knighting of the ill-fated Prince
Henry, and in 1613 another for the marriage of his daughter
Elizabeth to the Prince of Orange.
III. Suit and Service. This phrase expresses the essential
obligations inherent in the very nature of the feudal relation. It may
be expanded (as regards tenure in chivalry) into the duty of
attendance at the lord’s court, whether it met for administrative or
judicial purposes, or for reasons of mere display, and the further
duty of military service under that lord’s banner in the field. Suit, or
attendance at court, had ceased to be an urgent question before the
reign of John. Indeed, the barons, far from objecting to be present
there, were gradually approaching the modern conception, which
regards it as a privilege rather than a burden to attend the commune
concilium—the embryo Parliament—of the King. They urged, in
especial, that only in a full feudal court, at which each great Crown
tenant had a right to appear, could any one of their number be
judged in a plea involving loss of lands or of personal status.[117]
It was far otherwise with the duties of military service, which were
rendered every year more unwillingly, partly because of the
increased frequency of warlike expeditions, partly because of the
greater cost of campaigning in distant lands like Poitou, partly
because the English barons were completely out of sympathy with
John’s foreign policy and with him. We have seen that the want of
definition and looseness of practice in the reign of William the
Conqueror left to future ages a legacy fertile in disputes. William I.
and his barons lived in the present; and the present did not urgently
call for definition. Therefore, the exact duration of the military
service to be rendered, and the exact conditions (if any) on which
exemption could be claimed, were left originally quite vague. Such
carelessness is easily explained. Both Crown and barons hoped that
by leaving matters undefined, they would be able to alter them to
their own advantage. This policy was sure to lead to bitter quarrels
in the future, but circumstances delayed their outbreak. The
magnates at first readily followed William to the field wherever he
went, since their interests were identical with his, while warfare was
their normal occupation.
The exact amount of military service was gradually fixed by
custom, and both sides acquiesced in reckoning the return due
(servitium debitum) for each knight’s fee or scutum as the service of
one fully armed horseman during forty days. There were still,
however, innumerable minor points on which disputes might arise,
and these remained even in 1215. Indeed, although several chapters
of the Great Charter attempted to settle certain of these disputed
points, others were left as bones of contention to subsequent reigns:
for example, the exact equipment of a knight; the liability to serve
for more than forty days on receiving pay for the extra time; what
extent of exemption (if any) might be claimed by churchmen holding
baronies on the ground that they could not fight in person; how far
a tenant might compromise for actual service by tendering money;
whether attendance and money might not both be refused, if the
King did not lead his forces in person; and whether service was
equally due from all estates for foreign wars as for home ones.[118]
Such difficulties were increased, as time went on, rather than
removed. The Conqueror’s followers had possessed, like their lord,
estates on both sides of the Channel: his wars were theirs. Before
John’s reign, these simple relations had become complicated by two
considerations. By forfeitures and the division of inheritances
between sons of one father, holders of English fiefs and holders of
Norman fiefs had become distinct; the English barons had in 1213
nothing at stake in the Crown’s selfish schemes of aggrandisement
or defence. The England of John Lackland, like the England of
William of Orange, objected to be entangled in foreign wars in the
interests of foreign possessions of the King. On the other hand, the
gradual expansion of the dominions of the wearers of the English
Crown increased the number of their wars with the number of their
interests, and increased, too, the trouble and expense of each
expedition. The small wars with Wales and Scotland formed a
sufficient drain on the resources of English magnates without their
being summoned in intermediate years to fight in Maine or Gascony.
The greater number of campaigns might well be reckoned a breach
of the spirit of the original agreement.
Were the barons bound to follow John in a forlorn attempt, of
which they disapproved, to recover his lost fiefs from the French
Crown? Or were they bound to support him only in his legitimate
schemes as King of England? Or were they, by way of compromise,
liable for services in the identical possessions held by William the
Conqueror at the date when their ancestors first got their fiefs—that
is, for wars in England and Normandy alone? Tenderness for legal
subtleties or strict logic could hardly be expected from the
malcontents of the northern counties, smarting under a dumb sense
of wrong. Despising all nice definition, they declared roundly in 1213
that they owed no service whatsoever out of England.[119] This
extreme claim put them clearly in the wrong, since John had many
precedents to the contrary ready to lay before them. When the King,
on his return from his unfortunate expedition in 1214, demanded a
scutage from all who had not followed him to Poitou, the
malcontents declared that they had no obligation either to follow
him out of the kingdom, or to pay a scutage in lieu thereof.[120] Pope
Innocent was probably correct in condemning this contention as
founded neither on English law nor on feudal custom.[121] There is
some ground for believing that a compromise was mooted on the
basis that the barons should agree to serve in Normandy and
Brittany, as well as in England, on being exempted from fighting
elsewhere abroad.[122]
A definite understanding on this vital question was never arrived
at—not even on paper, since chapter 16 of Magna Carta contented
itself with the bald provision that existing services were not to be
increased (without defining what these were). This was merely to
shelve the difficulty: the dispute went on under varying forms and
led to a violent clashing of wills in the unseemly wrangle between
Edward I. and his Constable and Marshal, dramatized in a classic
passage by Walter of Hemingburgh.[123] Strangely enough, the
Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, which was, in part, the outcome of
this later quarrel, omits (like Magna Carta itself)[124] all reference to
foreign service. The total omission from both charters of all mention
of the chief cause of dispute is noteworthy. It must be remembered,
however, that the question of liability to serve abroad had practically
resolved itself into that of liability to scutage, and that chapters 12
and 14 of the Charter of 1215 provided an adequate check on the
levy of all scutages; but this is a subject of crucial importance, which
requires separate and detailed treatment.
IV. Scutage. The Crown did not always insist on actual personal
service, but was frequently willing to accept a commutation in the
form of a money payment. This subject of scutage is one of the
most vexed of questions; all received opinions of yesterday having
to-day been thrown into the melting pot. Serious attempts
constructively to restate the whole subject have hardly been made;
and no conclusions have yet received general acceptance.
Three modifications, however, of the theories of Stubbs and
Freeman, once universally accepted, seem likely to be soon
established: (1) that “scutage” is an ambiguous term with a vague
general meaning as well as a narrow technical meaning; (2) that the
importance of the changes introduced by Henry II. in 1156 and 1159
has been much exaggerated; and (3) that at a later time, probably
during John’s reign, scutage changed its character. It ceased to be
normally a commutation of service, since it was not infrequently
exacted by the Crown in addition to military service actually
performed. Each of these propositions requires explanation.
“Scutagium,” or “shield-money,” often means, it is true, a specific
sum of so much per knight’s fee (normally twenty shillings) accepted
by the King in lieu of the personal service in his army due by his
tenants in capite. Thus it is, as Dr. Stubbs explains, “an honourable
commutation for personal service”;[125] but it is also loosely used[126]
to denote any exaction whatsoever assessed on a feudal basis (that
is, taken exclusively from holders of fiefs) irrespective of the
occasion of its levy. Thus, money taken in name of one of the three
feudal aids is sometimes described as a scutage; and other instances
might be cited.
Again, learned opinion tends towards the belief that Henry II.
made no radical or startling alteration. Professor Freeman, Dr.
Stubbs, and their adherents familiarized a bygone generation of
historians with the view that one of Henry’s most important reforms
was to allow his Crown tenants at their discretion to substitute
payments in money for the old obligation of personal service in the
field—this option being granted to ecclesiastics in 1156, and to lay
barons in 1159. Such a theory had a priori much to recommend it. A
measure of this nature, while giving volume and elasticity to the
resources of the Crown, was calculated subtly to undermine the
basis of the feudal tie; but Henry, farseeing statesman as he was,
could not discard the ideals of his own generation. No evidence that
he made any sweeping change is forthcoming. His grandfather,
Henry I., is shown by the evidence of extant charters to have
accepted money in place of the services of knights when it suited
him (notably from church fiefs in 1109),[127] and there is no evidence
(direct or indirect) to show that the grandson accepted such
commutation when it did not suit him. The conclusions formulated,
with his usual energy, by Mr. J. Horace Round, lie implicitly in the
examples from the Pipe Rolls stored in the great work of Madox.
From these it would appear that the procedure of the Exchequer of
the great Angevin and his two sons might be explained in some such
propositions as these:
(a) The option to convert service into scutage lay with the Crown,
and not with the tenants, either individually or as a body. When the
King summoned his feudal army no baron could (as Professor
Freeman would have us believe) simply stay away under obligation
of paying a small fixed sum to the Exchequer. On the contrary, Henry
and his sons jealously preserved the right to insist on personal
service whenever it suited them; even efficient substitutes were not
always accepted, much less money payments.
(b) If the individual wished to stay at home he required to make a
special bargain to pay such fine as the King agreed to accept—and
sometimes he had to send a substitute in addition. The Pipe Rolls
show many such payments by stay-at-homes ne transfretent or pro
remanendo ab exercitu. Thus, in the twelfth year of John’s reign a
Crown tenant paid a fine “that he might send two knights to serve
for him in the army of Ireland.”[128]
Sometimes, indeed, Henry II. might announce that payments at a
certain rate would be accepted generally in lieu of service, but this
was when it suited him, not when it suited his military tenants. In
this connection twenty shillings per fee became recognized as a
usual, though by no means a necessary, rate.
(c) In the ordinary case, if the tenant in chivalry neither went in
person nor obtained leave from the Crown to stay away, he was in
evil plight. Defaulters were “in mercy”; they sometimes forfeited
their entire estates to the Crown,[129] and might be glad to accept
such terms of pardon as a gracious King condescended to hold out
to them. Sometimes, it is true, quite small amercements were
inflicted; the Abbot of Pershore in 1196 escaped with an
amercement of 40s.[130] Such leniency, however, was exceptional,
and the result of special royal clemency.
The right to determine the amount of amercements to be taken
lay within the province of the Barons of the Exchequer, who also
judged whether or not lands had escheated by default.
Henry II. seems to have levied money in name of scutage only
when actually at war—on seven occasions in all during a reign of
thirty-five years; and only once at a rate exceeding 20s., if we may
trust Mr. Round,[131] and that when he was putting forth a special
effort against Toulouse. Richard I., with all his rapaciousness, levied,
apparently, only four scutages during ten years, and the rate of 20s.
was never exceeded even in the King’s hour of urgent need,—in
1194, when the arrears of his ransom had to be paid and
preparations simultaneously made for war in Normandy.
At John’s accession, then, three rules might be regarded as having
all the prescriptive force of a long unbroken tradition, namely, (1)
that scutage was a reserve for extraordinary emergencies, not a
normal yearly burden; (2) that the recognized maximum was 20s.
per knight’s fee, while a lower rate (13s.4d. and even 10s.) had
occasionally been accepted; and (3) that the payment of scutage to
the King at a rate previously fixed by him acted as a complete
discharge of all obligations due for that occasion.
If it can be proved that John, almost from his accession,
deliberately altered all three of these well-established rules, and that
too in the teeth of the keen opposition of a high-spirited baronage
whose members felt that their pride and prestige as well as their
money-bags were attacked, a distinct step is taken towards
understanding the crisis of 1215. Such knowledge would explain why
a storm, long brewing, burst in John’s reign, neither sooner nor
later; and even why some of the disreputable stories told by the
chroniclers and accepted by Blackstone and others, found inventors
and willing believers.
It is here maintained that John did make changes in all three
directions; and, further, that the incidence of this increase in feudal
burdens was rendered even more unendurable by two
considerations:—because at his accession there remained unpaid
(particularly from the fiefs of the northern knights) large arrears of
the scutages imposed in his brother’s reign,[132] and because in June,
1212, John drew the feudal chain tight by a drastic and galling
measure. In that month he instituted a strict inquest into the
amount of feudal service exigible from every estate in England, to
prevent any dues escaping his wide net, and to revive all services
and payments that had lapsed or were in danger of lapsing.
That he made the first two changes becomes a certainty from a
glance at the table of scutages actually extorted during his reign, as
these are here copied from a list compiled by a writer of authority
who has no special theory to support,[133] viz.:
First scutage of reign— 1198- 2 marks per knight’s fee.
9—
Second " " 1200- 2 " "
1
Third " " 1201- 2 " "
2
Fourth " " 1202- 2 " "
3
Fifth " " 1203- 2 " "
4
Sixth " " 1204- 2 " "
5
Seventh " " 1205- 20s. "
6
Eighth " " 1209- 2 marks "
10
Ninth " " 1210- 2 " "
11
Tenth " " 1210- 20s. "
11
Eleventh " " 1213- 3 marks "
14
 It will be seen that, in the very first year of his reign, John took a
scutage, and that, too, at a rate above the established normal, at
two marks per scutum (only once equalled, thirty years before, and
then under special circumstances). Even one such exaction must
have made the already sulky Crown tenants look askance.
Next year John wisely allowed them breathing space; then without
a break in each of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh years of
his reign, scutages were extorted in quick succession at the high rate
of two marks. If John meant to establish this as a new normal rate,
he did so not without some show of reason, since that would exactly
pay the wages of a knight at 8d. per diem (the rate then current),
for a period of forty days (the exact term recognized by public
opinion as the maximum of compulsory feudal service).
Fines, in addition to this scutage of two marks, were apparently
exacted from those who had not made the necessary compromise
for personal service in due time.[134]
These scutages were collected with increasing difficulty, and
arrears gradually accumulated; but the spirit of opposition increased
even more rapidly. In 1206, apparently, the breaking point was
almost reached.[135] Accordingly, in that year, some slight relaxation
was allowed—the annual scutage was reduced from two marks to
20s. John’s needs, however, were as great as ever, and would
prevent all further concessions in future years, unless something
untoward happened. Something untoward did happen in the
summer of 1207, when John quarrelled with the Pope. This event
came in time, not as John thought to prevent, but, as the sequel
proved, merely to postpone, the crisis of the quarrel with the
baronage. John had, for the time being, the whole of the confiscated
property of the clergy in his clutches. The day of reckoning for this
luxury was still far distant, and the King could meanwhile enjoy a full
exchequer without goading his Crown tenants to rebellion. For three
years no scutage was imposed. In 1209, however, financial needs
again closed in on John, and a new scutage of two marks was
levied; followed in the next year actually by two scutages, the first of
two marks against Wales, and the second of 20s. against Scotland.
John never knew when to stop. These three levies, amounting to a
total of five-and-a-half marks per fee within two years, strained the
tension almost to breaking point.
During the two financial years immediately following (Michaelmas,
1211, to Michaelmas, 1213) no scutage was imposed. John,
however, although he thus a second time relaxed the tension, had
no intention to do so for long. On the contrary, he determined to
ascertain if scutages could not be made to yield more in the future.
By writs, dated 1st June, 1212, he instituted a great Inquest
throughout the land. Commissioners were appointed to take sworn
verdicts of local juries as to the amount of liability due by each
Crown vassal. Mr. Round[136] considers that previous writers have
unaccountably ignored the importance of this measure, “an Inquest
worthy to be named in future by historians in conjunction with those
of 1086 and 1166,”[137] and describes it as an effort “to revive rights
of the Crown alleged to have lapsed.” It is possible that John, by this
Inquest of 1212, sought also (unsuccessfully, as the sequel proved)
to do what Henry had done successfully in 1166—that is, to increase
the amount of knights’ fees on which each Crown tenant’s scutage
was assessed by adding to the previous total the number of knights
recently enfeoffed.
John clearly intended by this Inquest, the returns to which were
due on the 25th June, 1212, to prepare the necessary machinery for
wringing the uttermost penny out of the next scutage when occasion
for one again arose. That occasion came in 1214.
Up to this date, even John had not dared to exact a rate of more
than two marks per knight’s fee; but the weight of his constant
scutages had been increased by the fact that he sometimes exacted
personal services in addition, and that he inflicted crushing fines
upon those who neither went nor arranged beforehand terms of
composition with the King.[138]
Thus gradually and insidiously throughout the entire reign of John,
the stream of feudal obligations by many different channels steadily
rose until the barons feared that nothing of their property would be
saved from the torrent. The normal rate of scutage had been raised,
the frequency of its imposition had been increased, the conditions of
foreign service had become more burdensome, and the objects of
foreign expeditions more unpopular; while attempts were sometimes
made to exact both service and scutage in the same year. The limit
of the barons’ endurance was reached when, on 26th May, 1214,
John, already discredited by his unsuccessful expeditions in Poitou,
soon to be followed by the utter overthrow of his allies at Bouvines,
issued writs for a scutage at the unheard-of rate of three marks,
grounded doubtless on the inquest of 1212 and unusually far-
reaching in the subjects which it embraced.[139]
Then the final crash came; this writ was like a call to arms—a call
not to follow the King’s banner, but to fight against him.

64. Commentaries, II. 59.

65. See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I. 218.

66. See Statute 12 Charles II. c. 24.

67. See Pollock and Maitland, I. 274, n.

68. Pollock and Maitland, I. 218.

69. Littleton, II. viii. s. 133.

70. Littleton, II. viii. s. 153.

71. Littleton, II. viii. s. 158.

72. History of Exchequer, I. 650, citing Pipe Roll of 18 Henry III.

73. See Littleton, II. ix. s. 159. With this may be compared the
definition given in chapter 37 of Magna Carta, where John speaks of
land thus held by a vassal as “quam tenet de nobis per servitium
reddendi nobis cultellos, vel sagittas vel hujusmodi.”

74. Mediaeval England, pp. 249-250. A similar tenure still exists in

Scotland under the name of "blench"—a tenure wherein the
reddendo is elusory, viz., the annual rendering of such small things
as an arrow or a penny or a peppercorn, “if asked only” (si petatur
tantum).

75. Littleton, II. viii. s. 158.

76. Ibid., II. x. s. 162.

77. Pollock and Maitland, I. 218.

78. Littleton and Coke seem almost to countenance two additional

tenures, viz., tenure by scutage or escuage, and tenure by Castle-
guard. Pollock and Maitland consider both as alternative names for
knight’s service. (See I. 251 and I. 257.) The latter is discussed infra
under c. 29 of Magna Carta.

79. Jenks, Modern Land Law, p. 14.

80. It has been well described by Pollock and Maitland (I. 294) as
“the great residuary tenure.” In Scotland the “residuary tenure” is
not socage but “feu” (resembling the English fee-farm). Holdings in
feu are still familiar to Scots lawyers. They are originated by a formal
charter, followed by registration (the modern equivalent of
infeftment or feudal investiture), thus preserving an unbroken
connection with the feudal conveyancing of the Middle Ages.

81. Norman Conquest, V. 377; Hist. of William Rufus, 335–7.

82. Feudal England, p. 228 et seq.

83. All three forms of feudal obligation—service, incidents, and

aids—have long been obsolete in England. The statute 12 Charles II.
c. 24 swept away the feudal incidents along with the feudal system;
centuries before, scutages in lieu of military service had become
obsolete in the transition from the system of feudal finance to that
of national finance, effected by the Crown in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Feudal aids were also long obsolete, although
James I., in desperate straits for money, had attempted to revive
two of them. In France the feudal system, with all its burdensome
obligations, remained in full vigour until it was abolished in one night
by the famous decree of the National Assembly of 4th August, 1790.
In Scotland, the feudal system of land tenure still exists, and certain
of its incidents (e.g. reliefs and compositions or fines for alienation)
are exacted at the present day.

84. Blackstone, Commentaries, II. 63, however arranges these in

a different order, and mentions as a seventh incident “aids,” which
are here reserved for separate treatment.

85. See Pollock and Maitland, I. 296.

86. See infra, under c.2, for the steps in the gradual process
whereby this evil was redressed.

87. R. Thomson, Magna Charta, p. 236.

88. Infra, c. 32.

89. VII. 17.

90. Madox, I. 663.

91. See infra, c. 43.

92. See Hughes’ edition, p. 133.

93. See Dialogus, p. 222 (citing Pipe Roll, p. 27).

94. Glanvill, VII. c. 9. In socage and burgage tenures no incident

of wardship was recognized; the guardianship went to the relations
of the ward, and not to his feudal lord. Somewhat complicated, but
exceedingly equitable, rules applied to socage. The maternal kindred
had the custody, if the lands came from the father’s side; the
paternal kindred, if from the mother’s side (Glanvill, VII. c. 11). In
plain language, the boy and his property were entrusted to those
who had no interest in his death.

95. Littleton, II. iv. s. 103.

96. See under c. 5.

97. What these were may be read in the Pipe Rolls, e.g., in that of
14 Henry II., when the Bishopric of Lincoln was vacant.

98. See Statutes of the Realm, Ch. of Liberties, p. 5, and Sel.

Charters, p. 288: “Salva nobis et haeredibus nostris custodia
ecclesiarum et monasteriorum vacantium quae ad nos pertinent.”
Contrast the terms of Stephen’s Oxford Charter; Sel. Charters, pp.
120-1.

99. Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, p. 354.

100. Rot. Claus., pp. 37, 55.

101. Pollock and Maitland, I. 305.

102. See infra, under chapters 6, 7, and 8.

103. Middle Ages, II. 429.

104. p. 437.

105. The Bishop of Durham enjoyed it, so it seems to be stated in

a charter extorted from him in 1303 by the men of his fief (see
Lapsley, Pal. of Durham, p. 133). But this forms no real exception;
since the Bishop, as an Earl Palatine, enjoyed exceptionally the
regalia of a king.

106. See Pollock and Maitland, I. 292. It appears from statute of

Marlborough, c. 16, that primer seisin extended over lands held by
serjeanty as well as by knight’s service.
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