The principle of commuting for money the obligation of mili tary service struck at the root of the whole system, and so com plete was the change of conception that "tenure by knight-service of a mesne lord becomes, first in fact and then in law, tenure by escuage (i.e., scutage)." By the time of Henry III., as Bracton states, the test of tenure was scutage ; liability, however small, to scutage payment made the tenure military.
The disintegration of the system was carried farther in the latter half of the 13th century as a consequence of changes iri warfare, which were increasing the importance of foot soldiers and making the service of a knight for 4o days of less value to the king. The barons, instead of paying scutage, compounded for their service by the payment of lump sums, and, by a process which is still obscure, the nominal quotas of knight-service due from each had, by the time of Edward I., been largely reduced. The knight's fee, how ever, remained a knight's fee, and the pecuniary incidents of mili tary tenure, especially wardship, marriage and fines on alienation, long continued to be a source of revenue to the Crown. But at the Restoration tenure by knight-service was abolished by 12 Car. II.
c. 24, and these vexatious exactions disappeared.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For the returns of 1166 see the Liber Niger, ed. by Hearne, and the Liber Rubeus or Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. by Hall. The later returns are in Testa de Nevill (Record Commis sion, 1807) and in the Record Office volumes of Feudal Aids, arranged under counties. For the financial side see the early pipe-rolls of the Record Commission and the Pipe Roll Society, and abstracts of later ones in The Red Book of the Exchequer; but the editor's view must be received with caution and checked by J. H. Round's Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (for private circulation). The Baronia Anglica of Madox may also be consulted. The existing theory on knight-service was enunciated by Mr. Round in English Historical Review, vi., vii., and reissued by him in his Feudal England (1895). It is accepted by Pollock and Maitland (Hist. Eng. Law), who discuss the question at length ; by J. F. Baldwin in his Scutage and Knight-service in England (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1897), a valuable monograph with bibl.; and by Petit-Dutaillis, in his Studies supple mentary to Stubbs' Constitutional History (Manchester Univ. Series, 1908). (J. H. R.)