Note 57 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

But to return. It is infinitely easier to trace the change brought about by the inquest of 1166 in the case of the church fiefs than of the lay ones. For on the former it was uniform and glaring. Previously to 1166 the church tenants had paid on their servitium debitum alone; after 1166 they paid, as a rule, on all the fees actually created upon the fief. Thus the assessment of the Bishop of Durham was raised at a blow from ten fees to more than seventy.57 There were several equally striking cases among the prelates. Now, whether or not the church tenants feared something of the kind, they had generally been careful in their returns to set forth their servitium debitum, and when, in 1168, they were uniformly assessed on their total of fees, their uniform protest is expressed in the formula 'quos non recognoscit' applied to the payment on their excess knights. Such is the meaning of this puzzling formula which is peculiar to the church fiefs.58 In these cases it wholly replaces the de veteri and de novo assessment which, from 1166, was applied to the lay fiefs.