that the Anglo-Saxons were ignorant of it. Personally we share the opinion expressed by Mr. Round, and we find a difficulty in admitting that the English were not acquainted with the use of the abacus before the Norman Conquest. But let us approach the problem more directly. Can we determine the provenance of the arithmetical system described in the Dialogus? Stubbs notices that the term Scaccarium comes into use only in the reign of Henry I., and that until then the financial administration is called Thesaurus or Fiscus. Mr. Round quotes 2 a curious passage from the Cartulary of Abingdon, which records a lawsuit tried in the Curia

Regis at Winchester, in the Treasury: " apud

Wintoniam, in Thesauro;" we must perhaps conclude from this that at that moment, that is to say in the first years of the reign of Henry I., the institution described later by the author of the Dialogus already existed in its essential features, with its attributes at once financial and judicial, but that the accounts of the sheriffs were not yet received on the chequered cloth, since the term Scaccarium has not yet replaced the term Thesaurus. Doubtless the sheriffs were accounted with by means of tallies," the notched sticks of which Stubbs speaks. The author of the Dialogus tells us indeed: "Quod autem hodie dicitur ad scaccarium, olim dicebatur ad taleas." 3 It must then have been in the course of the reign of Henry 1. that the substitution of the one system for the other was effected; henceforth the financial court called previously Thesaurus took, by extension, the name of Scaccarium, which denoted the table of account now in use, and which had been suggested by the appearance of the chequered cloth.*

1. Const. Hist., i, p. 407.

2. Commune of London, p. 94.

3. Dialogus. i, 1 (Ed. Hughes, etc., p. 60).

4. "Licet autem tabula talis scaccarium dicatur, transumitur tamen hoc nomen, ut ipsa quoque curia, que consedente scaccario est, scaccarium dicatur. Que est ratio huius nominis?-Nulla mihi verior ad presens occurrit quam quia scaccarii lusilis similem habet formam." (Ibidem.)

The foreign origin of the Exchequer is not proved

This is the very probable view accepted by Mr. Round. But we do not see that anyone is justified in concluding from it that "the arithmetic of the Exchequer is clearly of foreign origin." It would be necessary indeed to prove : (1) that this system of accounting was not known previously in England; we have already expressed our doubt on this head; (2) that it was employed previously on the Continent. The term Exchequer is only found in the countries occupied by the Normans, but it in no wise follows that it is of Norman origin. It may equally well be of English origin. The considerations brought forward on that point by Stubbs retain all their force, even since the discovery by Mr. Round in a Merton Cartulary of proof that there was an Exchequer in Normandy in 1130 at the very latest.1 Indeed there is nothing to preclude the adoption of the chequered cloth in England being anterior by some years to this date.

The Norman origin, therefore, of the arithmetic employed in the twelfth century is very far from being proved. As regards the staff of the Upper Exchequer, it is true that the great officers who sit there bear essentially French titles. When we compare the little work entitled Constitutio Domus Regis with the

The staff of the Upper Exchequer may have been

formed before the Conquest

Dialogus de Scaccario, we note that "with a few exceptions every important officer in the financial department has his place in the household.

1. Bernard the King's scribe, in English Historical Review, xiv, 1899, pp. 425 sqq. The document in question relates to a lawsuit regarding a Norman estate claimed by Serlo the Deaf from Bernard the Scribe. The suit was tried at the Exchequer : "Et ibi positus fuit Serlo in misericordia regis per judicium baronum de Scaccario, quia excoluerat terram illam super saisinam Bernardi, quam ante placitum istud disracionaverat per judicium episcopi Luxoviensis et Roberti de Haia et multorum ad Scaccarium, etc." The document as a whole shows that we have to do with a Norman Exchequer. The bishop of Lisieux, who presided over it, it seems, resided uninterruptedly in his diocese, and Robert de la Haie was seneschal of Normandy.

D

It may be added that the constitution of the household is so clearly of Frankish origin that it is not possible even to doubt that its organization was originally imported from abroad.” But again, we must be The

agreed on the nature of the point at issue. important thing, be it remembered, is to distinguish what influence the Norman Conquest can have had on the development of the financial organization.

We have just seen that the method of verification of the accounts and even the name Exchequer may have arisen simultaneously in England and in Normandy or in England even earlier than in Normandy. As far as concerns the great officers sitting in the financial court, the Conquest of 1066 may have equally had no influence-for the good reason that these great officers existed in England before the Conquest of 1066, and that the court of Edward the Confessor was already profoundly "Normanised." Mr. Round, whom we have constantly to quote, has shown that this king had a marshal (named Alfred), a constable (Bondig), a seneschal (Eadnoth), a butler (Wigod), a chamberlain (Hugh), a treasurer (Henry), a chancellor (Regenbald), in short the same great officers who figured at the court of the Norman dukes.2 Did these personages take part in financial administration? It would be rash to affirm it at present. But all that we know of the monarchical institutions of the West at that period equally forbids us to deny it.

To sum up, we see that some new documents have been contributed to the discussion, but without throwing any decisive light upon it. The description Conclusion which Stubbs gave, thirty years ago, of the operations of the Exchequer, has been rectified and the details filled in, but his cautious conclusions upon the

1. Hughes, Crump and Johnson, Introduction, p. 14.

2. Round, The officers of Edward the Confessor, in Engl. Hist. Review, xix, 1904, pp. 90-92.

origin of the institution remain intact. He may have happened on other points to have underestimated excessively the effects of the Conquest of 1066 on the political development of England, but he appears to have been right in thinking that while the Exchequer manifestly contains certain Anglo-Saxon elements we cannot discern with certainty any element the introduction of which was the direct result of the Norman Conquest.1

1. See the bibliography of works relating to the Exchequer in Gross, Sources, § 50, and in the edition of the Dialogus referred to above, pp. vii-viii. The chief things to read are the article published by Mr. Round, in The Commune of London and Other Studies, and the introduction of Messrs. Hughes, Crump and Johnson, the merit of which we do not think of disputing. Mr. Round has brought to light the feudal, "tenurial" character of the two offices of Chamberlain and studied the mode of payment ad scalam and the ad pensum system; he has discovered also that the whole of the receipts and expenses did not appear in the Pipe Rolls, and that besides the Exchequer, the Treasury, which for a long time had its seat at Winchester, had its special accounts and its chequered cloth to verify them.

52

VII.

ENGLISH SOCIETY DURING THE FEUDAL PERIOD.

THE TENURIAL SYSTEM AND THE ORIGIN OF TENURE BY MILITARY SERVICE.

Continental

IN certain pages of his work Stubbs, either in dealing with the Norman Conquest or in order to give an understanding of the elements which Differences from composed the solemn assemblies of the Society Curia Regis, incidentally explains what an earl, a baron and a freeholder were, and expresses his opinion on the origin of tenure by knightservice. We shall consider here the question as a whole, and at a slightly different angle, in order that the reader may the more clearly account for the differences which separate English and French society during that period.

In spite of the "feudalization" of England by the Normans, the principles which distinguished men from one another in England were not the same as on the Continent. Differences of terminology already warn us that the institutions are not identical. The word vassallus is very seldom met with; alodium, in Domesday Book, does not denote an estate not held of a lord; but doubtless simply a piece of land transmissible to a man's heirs; it is very nearly the sense of feodum, which has a very vague meaning in English documents. It is said that So-and-so "tenet in feodo" if his rights are heritable, even when he has only the obligations of an agricultural tenant towards his lord.2

1. Const. Hist., i, pp. 283 sqq., 389 sqq., 604 sqq.

2. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 152 sqq.; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i, pp. 234 sqq., 297. It is to this last work that we chiefly refer the reader for all that follows. He will find there a notable exposition of what we call the "feudal institutions" of England. [On feudum and alodium in Domesday, cf. Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, pp. 232-8.]