we may conjecture
to have been but feebly executed by the magistrate against the perpetual
interest of so many individuals. The constable and mareschal, when
they mustered the armies, often in a hurry, and for want of better
information, received the service of a baron for fewer knights' fees
than were due by him; and one precedent of this kind was held good
against the king, and became ever after a reason for diminishing the
service.[***]

* Cotton's Abr. p. 11.

** Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 114.

*** Madox, Bar. Ang. p 115.

The rolls of knights' fees were inaccurately kept; no care was taken to
correct them before the armies were summoned into the field,[*] it
was then too late to think of examining records and charters; and the
service was accepted on the footing which the vassal himself was pleased
to acknowledge, after all the various subdivisions and conjunctions
of property had thrown an obscurity on the nature and extent of his
tenure.[**] It is easy to judge of the intricacies which would attend
disputes of this kind with individuals; when even the number of military
fees belonging to the church, whose property way fixed and unalienable,
became the subject of controversy; and we find in particular, that when
the bishop of Durham was charged with seventy knights' fees for the aid
levied on occasion of the marriage of Henry II.'s daughter to the
duke of Saxony, the prelate acknowledged ten, and disowned the other
sixty.[***] It is not known in what mariner this difference was
terminated; but had the question been concerning an armament to defend
the kingdom, the bishop's service would probably have been received
without opposition for ten fees; and this rate must also have fixed all
his future payments. Pecuniary scutages, therefore, diminished as much
as military services;[****] other methods of filling the exchequer, as
well as the armies, must be devised: new situations produced new laws
and institutions; and the great alterations in the finances and military
power of the crown, as well as in private property, were the source of
equal innovations in every part of the legislature or civil government.

* We hear only of one king, Henry II., who took this pains;
and the record, called Liber Niger Scaccarii, was the result
of it.

** Madox, Bar. Ang. p. 116.

*** Madox, p. 122. Hist. of the Exch. p. 404.

**** In order to pay the sum of one hundred thousand