ighth of Edw. III; and
then raised it by a rate among themselves, and returned it into the
royal exchequer.

[Footnote a: 2 Inst. 77. 4 Inst. 34.]

[Footnote b: Hoved. _A.D._ 1188. Carte. 1. 719. Hume. 1. 329.]

[Footnote c: _A.D._ 1232.]

THE other antient levies were in the nature of a modern land tax; for
we may trace up the original of that charge as high as to the
introduction of our military tenures[d]; when every tenant of a
knight's fee was bound, if called upon, to attend the king in his army
for forty days in every year. But this personal attendance growing
troublesome in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding
for it, by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time
by making a pecuniary satisfaction to the crown in lieu of it. This
pecuniary satisfaction at last came to be levied by assessments, at so
much for every knight's fee, under the name of scutages; which appear
to have been levied for the first time in the fifth year of Henry the
second, on account of his expedition to Toulouse, and were then (I
apprehend) mere arbitrary compositions, as the king and the subject
could agree. But this precedent being afterwards abused into a means
of oppression, (by levying scutages on the landholders by the royal
authority only, whenever our kings went to war, in order to hire
mercenary troops and pay their contingent expences) it became
thereupon a matter of national complaint; and king John was obliged to
promise in his _magna carta_[e], that no scutage should be imposed
without the consent of the common council of the realm. This clause
was indeed omitted in the charters of Henry III, where[f] we only find
it stipulated, that scutages should be taken as they were used to be
in the time of king Henry the second. Yet afterwards, by a variety of
statutes under Edward I and his grandson[g], it was provided, that
the king shall not take any aids or tasks, any talliage or tax, but by
the common assent of the great men and commons in parliament.

[Footnote d: See the second book of these commentaries.]

[Footnote e: _cap._ 14.]

[Footnote f: 9 Hen. III. c. 37.]

[Footnote g: 25 Edw. I. c. 5 & 6. 34 Edw. I. st. 4. c. 1. 14 Edw. III.
st. 2. c. 1.]

OF the same nature with scutages upon knights-fees were the
assessments of hydage upon all other lands, and of talliage upon
cities and burghs[h]. But they all gradually fell into disuse, upon
the introduction of subsidies, about the time