Note 42 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

The first point to be considered is this: What was the information which the tenants-in-chief were called upon to supply in these returns? It was not, as Dr Stubbs and others have supposed, the amount of 'service' due from each fief to the crown.42 The information asked for was the number of 'milites' actually enfeoffed by each 'baron' and his predecessors in title, with the number of 'servitia' due from each such 'miles' to the 'baron'. In this distinction, missed by Dr Stubbs, we find the key to the problem. The crown, we shall see, must previously have known the total amount of 'service' due from each fief; but what it did not know, and what it wished to know, was the number of knights' fees which, up to 1166, had been created on each fief.