so for an innovation which was
afterwards carried further by his successors, and was attended with the
most important consequences. This prince was disgusted with the species
of military force which was established by the feudal institutions, and
which, though it was extremely burdensome to the subject, yet rendered
very little service to the sovereign. The barons, or military tenants,
came late into the field; they were obliged to serve only forty days;
they were unskilful and disorderly in all their operations; and they
were apt to carry into the camp the same refractory and independent
spirit to which they were accustomed in their civil government. Henry,
therefore, introduced the practice of making a commutation of their
military service for money; and he levied scutages from his baronies
and knights' fees, instead of requiring the personal attendance of his
vassals. There is mention made, in the history of the exchequer, of
these scutages in his second, fifth, and eighteenth year; and other
writers give us an account of three more of them.[*] When the prince had
thus obtained money, he made a contract with some of those adventurers
in which Europe at that time abounded; they found him soldiers of the
same character with themselves, who were bound to serve for a stipulated
time: the armies were less numerous, but more useful, than when composed
of all the military vassals of the crown: the feudal institutions began
to relax: the kings became rapacious for money, on which all their power
depended: the barons, seeing no end of exactions, sought to defend their
property, and as the same causes had nearly the same effects in the
different countries of Europe, the several crowns either lost or
acquired authority, according to their different success in the contest.

This prince was also the first that levied a tax on the movables or
personal estates of his subjects, nobles as well as commons. Their zeal
for the holy wars made them submit to this innovation; and a precedent
being once obtained, this taxation became, in following reigns, the
usual method of supplying the necessities of the crown. The tax of
danegelt, so generally odious to the nation, was remitted in this reign.

[* Tyrrel, vol. ii. p. 466, from the records. It
was a usual practice of the kings of England to repeat the
ceremony of their coronation thrice every year, on
assembling the states at the three great festivals. Henry,
aft