The customary service of one The value of the knight's fee fully armed man for each five hides must already have been fixed was probably the rate at which the --twenty pounds a year.[32] newly endowed follower of the king would be expected to discharge his duty ... and the number of knights to be furnished by a particular feudatory would be ascertained by inquiring the number of hides that he held.[31]
The number of hides which the It cannot even be granted that knight's fee contained being known, a definite area of land was the number of knights' fees in any necessary to constitute a particular holding could be easily knight's fee; ... It is discovered.[33] impossible to avoid the conclusion that the extent of a All the imposts of the ... Norman knight's fee was determined by reigns, were, so far as we know, rent and valuation rather than raised on the land, and according acreage, and that the common to computation by the hide: ... the quantity was really expressed feudal exactions by way of aid ... in the twenty librates, etc. were levied on the hide.[34] [35]
The variation in the number of hides contained in the knight's fee.[36]
Mr Freeman's views need not detain us, for he unhesitatingly accepts Dr Stubbs' arguments as proving that the Norman military tenure was based on 'the old service of a man from each five hides of land'.[37]
We find then, I submit, that the recognized leaders of existing opinion on the subject cannot agree among themselves in giving us a clear answer, when we ask them what determined the amount of 'service' due from a Norman tenant-in-chief, or, in other words, how that 'service' was developed in unbroken continuity from Anglo-Saxon obligations.
The third point that I would raise is this. Even assuming that the amount of 'service' bore a fixed proportion--whether in pecuniary or territorial units--to the extent of possession, we are, surely, at once confronted by the difficulty that the owner of _x_ units of possession would be compelled, for the discharge of his military obligations, to enfeoff _x_ knights, assigning a 'unit' to each. A tenant-in-chief, to take a concrete instance, whose fief was worth £100 a year, would have to provide _ex hypothesi_ five knights; if, as was quite usual, he enfeoffed the full number, he would have to assign to each knight twenty librates of land (which I may at once, though anticipating, admit was the normal value of a knight's fee), that is to say, the crown would have forestalled Henry George, and the luckless _baro_ would see the entire value of his estate swallowed up in the discharge of its obligations.[38] What his position would be in cases where, as often, he enfeoffed more knights than he required, arithmetic is unable to determine. I cannot understand how this obvious difficulty has been so strangely overlooked.