Note 117 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

The persistent assertion that the Cartae Baronum were connected with, and preliminary to, the auxilium ad filiam maritandam of 1168 is undoubtedly to be traced to Swereford's ipse dixit to that effect. He distinctly asserts that the aid was fixed (assisum) in the thirteenth year (1167), that the returns (cartae) were made in the same year (1167), and that the aid was paid and accounted for in the fourteenth year (1168).117 Modern research, however, has shown that the returns were made quite early in 1166, while the youthful Matilda, we know, was not married till October 1168. This throws an instructive light on Swereford's modus operandi. Finding from the rolls that the payments made in 1168 were based on the returns in the cartae, and not being acquainted with the date of the latter, he jumped to the conclusion that they must have been made in 1167, it being his (quite unsupported) thesis that all levies were fixed in the year preceding that in which they were accounted for on the rolls.