Note b — NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII.

Mr. Spence has ingeniously conjectured, observing that in some passages of Domesday (he quotes two, but I only find one) the barons who held more than six manors paid their relief directly to the king, while those who had six or less paid theirs to the sheriff (Yorkshire, 298, b), that "this may tend to solve the disputed question as to what constituted one of the greater barons mentioned in the Magna Charta of John and other early Norman documents; for, by analogy to the mode in which the relief was paid, the greater barons were summoned by particular writs, the rest by one general summons through the sheriff." History of Equitable Jurisdiction, p. 40.