Note 65 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

Although Tavistock, in the first scutage, appears to have paid on the anomalous assessment of ten and a half knights its payment on fifteen in the two succeeding ones may fairly be taken as evidence that this was its servitium debitum.65 Its abbot, however, made no reference to that servitium in his return, and—by an exception to the regular practice in the case of church fiefs—we find him charged, not on the fees, (1) 'quos recognoscit', (2) 'quos non recognoscit', but on those which were enfeoffed 'de veteri', and 'de novo' just as if he were a lay tenant. As his fees 'de veteri' were sixteen, this figure recurs in successive scutages, until in 3 John we find him contesting as to one knight ('unde est contentio') who, doubtless, represented the difference between fifteen and sixteen.