Note 111 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

Passing, for the present, over minor points, I would fix on the 'Great Scutage', or 'Scutage of Toulouse', as the test by which Swereford's knowledge and accuracy must stand or fall. If he is in error on this matter, his error is so grievous and so far-reaching that it must throw the gravest doubt on all his similar assertions. The date of the expedition against Toulouse was June 1159 (the host having been summoned at Mid-Lent): from the chroniclers we learn that, to provide the means for it, and especially to pay an army of mercenaries, a great levy was made in England and beyond sea. The roll of the following Michaelmas records precisely such a levy, and the payments so recorded must have been made for the expenses of this campaign. But we can go further still; we can actually prove from internal evidence that sums accounted for on the roll of 1159 were levied expressly for the Toulouse campaign.111 Yet we are confidently informed by Swereford that this levy was for a Welsh war, and that the scutage of Toulouse is represented by the levies which figure on the rolls of 1161 and 1162. He appears to have evolved out of his inner consciousness the rule that a scutage, though fixed and even paid in any given year, was never accounted for on the rolls till the year after.112 But as even this rule will not apply to his calculation here, one can only suggest that he was absolutely ignorant of the date of the Toulouse campaign.113 The value of Swereford's calculations is so seriously affected by this cardinal error, that one may reject with less hesitation his statement that the scutage of 1156 was taken for a Welsh war, and not, as there is evidence to imply, for a campaign against the king's brother. Swereford, again, may be pardoned for his ignorance of the fact that scutage existed under Henry I,114 but when he unhesitatingly assigns the Domesday Survey to the fourteenth year of the Conqueror (1079-80), he shows us that the precision of his statements is no proof of their accuracy. On both these points he has misled subsequent writers.115