1889 NOTES and DOCUMENTS 105 Here, Then, We Have the Probable Key to the Whole System of William of Tyre's Hypothetical Dating

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1889 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 105 Here, then, we have the probable key to the whole system of William of Tyre's hypothetical dating. He has heard, and he has heard truly, that the young king was thirteen when his father died and thirty-two at the time of his decease. He also knows that the king's parents were wedded in the spring of 1129 ; and all the facts of the case, so far as he has them, can be solved by making the offspring of this marriage born late in 1129 or early in 1180: in other words, by supposing the traditionary ' thirteen' to mean just thirteen or not quite thirteen instead of nearly fourteen. Possibly

bis error was helped out by reading somewhere or other that Fulk Downloaded from died ' anno regni ximo' for ' anno regni xvmo;' or by a misinterpreta- tion of some casual entry which, using a western mode of chronology, referred Baldwin Ill's death to February 1162 when February 1168 was meant. In any case by adopting the theory that Baldwin m

reigned from 1144 to 1163 we adopt not only a chronology which http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ fits almost all the facts of the case and explains how the initial error began, but one which we have already seen strong reasons for accepting by a perfectly different line of argument. T. A. AECHEE.

THE GEE AT CAEUCAGE OF 1198.

I WILL endeavour briefly to reply to Miss Norgate's courteous, criti- cism (vol. iii. p. 702) of my paper on the above subject (p. 501). at University of Michigan on September 1, 2015 It was my endeavour to challenge and discuss the accepted view of the survey of 1198 on three points. 1. That ' the commissioners' report is lost, and there is not even any proof that it was ever presented.' ' 2. That the levies of 1194 and 1198 were each styled a 'carucage,' and that this ' carucage' was ' the danegeld under a new name,'s or, as MiBS Norgate puts it, ' was in reality an old impost revived under a new name.'3 those of Baldwin's reign, though this is a somewhat violent theory to advocate. Or possibly Baldwin may have resigned his authority to his son-in-law in 1180 or 1181, hough he continued to live till 1132—a date which is not unfrequently given as that of his decease. (Cf. Henry of Hunt. p. 258 ; Bog. of Howd. i. 186). These, however, are hazardous speculations, and the writer cannot help entertaining a suspicion that, as we have four specified dates in these lines, they were originally meant to-apply to fonr distinct kings. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why Folk's death should not be denoted along with that of his predecessors. Lone 25 seems to break the continuity of the grammar, whereas, if we transfer the fifteen years from Baldwin II to his successor, we at once bring the regnal yeirs of both kings into strict conformity with the evidence of the contemporary writers Orderic Vitalisi Anselm, and Sigebert's continuator (1180-1144). The error in the text might then be due to a transcriber's carelessness or possibly to some confusion in the chronological notes on which the anonymous poet based bis verses. The French editor of the Historia Nicana suggests that lines 27 and 28 should change places; but this emen- dation leaves the difficulty of Baldwin II's ' quindeni anni ' unsolved. 1 Miss Norgate's Angevin Kings, ii. 854. 1 Stubbs's Select Cluirtcrs, p. 28. Angevin Kings, ii. 329. 106 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS Jan. 8. That this ' carucage' was ' a much more stringent form' of danegeld.* Taking these three points in succession, Miss Norgate accepts my correction of the first statement; tacitly accepts my correction of the second by confessing that the ' new name' of ' carucage' cannot be found by her to have been used before the days of Henry DI; and strangely (though of course unintentionally) mis- represents me on the third by writing, ' I do not know where or by whom such a view has been stated,' though I quoted the ipsisnma verba of Dr. Stubbs and gave the reference in full.11 As it is on this third point that she chiefly assails my conclusions, Downloaded from I will, as briefly as possible, discuss it. Miss Norgate writes— Historians have generally assumed—and thus far Mr. Bound will probably not differ from them—that as a matter of convenience for purposes of registration and calculation ' the substitution of a uniform for a variable carucate was,' as Bishop Stubbs says, ' a great advantage http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ to the exohequer' (pp. 708—4). On the contrary I assert that, for convenience and simplicity of calculation, the familiar and stereotyped Domesday assessment was all that the exchequer could desire. To exchange this time-honoured and sacrosanct register6 for a novel and revolutionary assessment would be repugnant to the official mind, and would most seriously 7 disturb the mechanical routine of the exchequer. It would com- at University of Michigan on September 1, 2015 plicate, not facilitate, the work of registration and calculation. Further, in order to carry out the plan, as Dr. Stubbs observes, ' a new survey on the principle of Domesday was requisite;' and if ' even from this the justiciar did not shrink,'9 it was because the reform was expected to result in such a gain to the treasury as would amply compensate for all the above drawbacks. Gneist saw this in a dim, confused way when he wrote of this reform— It was natural that the feudal possessors should not willingly ac- quiesce in such a sudden change in the scale of levying, i.e. according to acreage instead of the feudal register.9 Miss Norgate, indeed, denies that the ' devisers ' of this reform are supposed to have specially aimed at substituting a heavier for a lighter taxation ' (p. 708), but surely she contradicts herself when she admits, directly after, tbat ' if the new assessment

* Stnbbs's Const. Hist., i. 510. * Miss Norgate makes me (p. 708) refer to a quite different passage (in another work), which I refer to in another place and for another purpose. * ' Com ventum fnerit ad libram sententia ejus infatnari non poteat vel impune declinari' {Dialogus de Scaccario). 1 Every student of the Pipe Bolls most be familiar with their stereotyped system and mechanically recurring entries. * Const. Hist., i. 510. * History of the English Constitution, i. 215 1889 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 107 diminished the proceeds of the levy' (i.e. substituted a lighter taxation), ' the financial results of the survey must have been of a character startlingly unlike that which we are accustomed to attribute to the administration of Hubert Walter ' (p. 704). My own view that the new assessment was expected to produce a gain to the exchequer and a corresponding ' disadvantage to the taxpayers as a body' is strongly corroborated by the discovery I have made that a precisely similar fiscal reform had been already carried out in another branch. Miss Norgate replies that, ' on the contrary, the allowance of a hundred acres to the plough was not an illiberal measure towards the cultivators.' But the words she Downloaded from here quotes are merely an obiter dictum of Dr. Stubbs (from whom Gneist also copies); and to make 100 acres the taxable unit when the ploughland contained (as I hold on the authority of Fleta) 160 acres in a two-course and 180 in a three-course manor was anything but a liberal measure. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ But, coming to the evidence of the Warwickshire manors, as set forth in my previous paper, Miss Norgate mistakes the character of the reform when she describes it as a ' mere change in the mode of computing the extent of the carucate' (p. 702). I have not here the space to set forth the whole process of development in the system of land taxation, but I must repeat that the object of the reform was, not to substitute ' a uniform for a variable carucate' at University of Michigan on September 1, 2015 (whatever that may mean) as the unit of taxation, but to substitute the actual plougJUand (terra ad unam carucam) for the nominal hide as the unit. Now in the case of the six Warwickshire manorB the Domesday assessment was phenomenally low, their eighteen plough- lands being assessed at only eight and a half (nominal) hides, and consequently only contributing 17s. to a normal two-shilling levy. Consequently this was just the case in which the reform should have ' levelled up' the assessment, instead of which we find its effect to have been the reduction of the assessment from 8£ units to 5£, with the result that these manors would only contribute 10a. 8d. instead of 17s. to a two-shilling levy. This was the unaccountable result which I declared myself unable to explain, but in which Miss Norgate, it appears, sees nothing strange. My own suspicions were strengthened, as I observed (p. 508), by the fact that ' the aggregate valets of the six manors ' are returned in 1198 as less than half of the sum returned in 1086. We are, in short, tempted to ask whether, in the face of a levy raised on a ' more stringent' assessment, and at a higher rate to boot, the taxpayers may not have conspired to deceive and thwart the exchequer. My own experience of sworn verdicts by those whose interests were at stake in mediffival times does not lead me to place in them implicit faith. But I only advance this suggestion, of course, as a pis aller. J. H. BOUND.