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It is hard to dissociate the pope's feeling in this matter from his rejection of the nomination of the king's chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, to the see of Canterbury, as an illiterate politician. The dislike of the taxes made necessary by the Welsh and French wars, such as the "scutage of Poitou" and the "scutage of Kerry," swelled the outcry against the justiciar.
In a sense, scutage was the beginning of taxation; but it was only a commutation for military service, much as a man to-day might pay a substitute to go to war in times of draft. General taxation first appears in 1188 in the famous Saladin tithe, the first historical instance of the taxation of personal property as distinct from a feudal burden laid upon land.
In the meantime financial difficulties were pressing heavily upon the king of England. Scutages for the war in Normandy had been taken in 1196 and 1197. In the next year a still more important measure of taxation was adopted, which was evidently intended to bring in larger sums to the treasury than an ordinary scutage. This is the tax known as the Great Carucage of 1198.
John, knowing nothing of the coming storm, pursued his policy of winning over the Church by granting it freedom of election, while he embittered still more the strife with his nobles by demanding scutage from the northern nobles who had refused to follow him to Poitou.
Not only were William de Braose and his wife to be punished, but the Lacies had been for some time altogether too independent, and the conduct of William Marshal was not satisfactory. The undertaking occasioned the first instance of direct taxation since the lands of the Church had been taken in hand, a scutage, which in this case at least would have a warrant in strict feudal law.
It is interesting; therefore, to find, hardly a century after the Norman Conquest. In 1181, the Assize of Arms, which revived the ancient Saxon "Fyrd," the word for what we now call militia; and, twenty years before that, "scutage" replaced military service. To the burdens of the feudal system, compulsory military service and standing armies, our ancestors objected from the very beginning.
In the war of Toulouse in 1159 the problem was for the first time raised as to the obligation of feudal vassals to foreign service, and Henry gladly seized the opportunity to carry out his plan yet more fully. The chief vassals who were unwilling to join the army were allowed to pay a fixed tax or "scutage" instead of giving their personal service.
Scutage was only due for foreign campaigns: the feudal aids only on rare and stated occasions: and though the fines from the shire-courts grew with the growth of society the dues from the public lands were fixed and incapable of developement. But no usage fettered the Crown in dealing with personal property, and its growth in value promised a growing revenue.
John had again raised the rate of scutage, and imposed aids, fines, and ransoms at his pleasure without counsel of the baronage. The Great Charter met this abuse by a provision on which our constitutional system rests.
The king promised redress both of ecclesiastical and civil grievances; and the Parliament in return agreed to grant him a supply, a tenth of the ecclesiastical benefices, and a scutage of three marks on each knight's fee: but as they had experienced his frequent breach of promise, they required that he should ratify the great charter in a manner still more authentic and more solemn than any which he had hitherto employed.
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