Note 149 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

We thus obtain a grand total of 1,101 marcs raised from the church by legitimate scutage, and 4,442½ (or, adding the dona from non-feudal houses, 4,700) marcs by special imposition.149 This distinction at once explains the real extortion of which churchmen complained;150 and shows that it had nothing to do with scutage, but was a special imposition on the church fees from which the lay ones were exempt.151 The idea of the impost was not improbably the adjustment of inequalities in cases where the knight-service was a quite inadequate assessment; the precedent created was not forgotten, and it proved in later days a welcome source of revenue.