sons who were to form it; and unless those who obeyed the
summons could bind those who did not, the powers of the assembly when
convened must have been very defective." (p. 40.)

Though I do not perceive why we should assume any great subdivision of
tenures before the statute of _Quia Emptores_, in 18 Edw. I., which
prohibited subinfeudation, it is obvious that the committee have pointed
out the inconvenience of a scheme which gave all tenants _in capite_
(more numerous in Domesday than they perhaps were aware) a right to
assist at great councils. Still, as it is manifest from the early
charters, and explicitly admitted by the committee, that the king could
raise no extraordinary contribution from his immediate vassals by his
own authority, and as there was no feudal subordination between one of
these and another, however differing in wealth, it is clear that they
were legally entitled to a voice, be it through general or special
summons, in the imposition of taxes which they were to pay. It will not
follow that they were summoned, or had an acknowledged right to be
summoned, on the few other occasions when legislative measures were in
contemplation, or in the determinations taken by the king's great
council. This can only be inferred by presumptive proof or
constitutional analogy.

The eleventh article of the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164 declares
that archbishops, bishops, and all persons of the realm who hold of the
king _in capite_, possess their lands as a barony, and are bound to
attend in the judgments of the king's court like other barons. It is
plain, from the general tenor of these constitutions, that "universae
personae regni" must be restrained to ecclesiastics; and the only words
which can be important in the present discussion are "sicut barones
caeteri." "It seems," says the committee, "to follow that all those
termed the king's barons were tenants in chief of the king; but it does
not follow that all tenants in chief of the king were the king's barons,
and as such bound to attend his court. They might not be bound to attend
unless they held their lands of the king in chief 'sicut baroniam,' as
expressed in this article with respect to the archbishops and other
clergy." (p. 44.) They conclude, however, that "upon the whole the
Constitutions of Clarendon, if the existing copies be correct, afford
strong ground for presuming that owing suit to the king's great court
rendered the tenant one of the king