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When Henry called his chief lords to serve in the war of Toulouse, he allowed the lower tenants to commute their service for sums payable to the royal treasury under the name of "scutage," or shield-money. The "Great Scutage" did much to disarm the baronage, while it enabled the king to hire foreign mercenaries for his service abroad. Again however he was luckless in war.
The king could require in war the personal attendance of his vassals, that is, of almost all the landed proprietors; and if they declined the service, they were obliged to pay him a composition in money, which was called a scutage.
It is most probable that no regular account of the knights' fees was ever taken until they became liable to taxation, either in the form of auxilium militum under Henry I, or in that of scutage under his grandson. The facts, however, which are here adduced, preclude the possibility of referring this portion of the feudal innovations to the direct legislation of the Conqueror.
It is in connexion with this expedition to Normandy that there first appears in the reign of Henry II the financial levy known as "scutage" a form of taxation destined to have a great influence on the financial and military history of England, and perhaps even a greater on its constitutional history.
From the beginning to the end of the Monarchical Period tenure continued to be of the Crown, land being unallodial, and mostly held in clans or families, and not entailed, the conditions of tenure being payment of an annual tax, a fee for alienation, and money compensation for personal services to the Government, generally incorporated into the direct tax as scutage.
Their rights of jurisdiction were curtailed. A final blow was struck at their military power by the adoption of scutage. In the Welsh campaign of 1157 Henry opened his military reforms by introducing a system new to England in the formation of his army.
The term "scutage" may be roughly translated "shield money," and, as the word implies, it was a tax assessed on the knight's fee, and was in theory a money payment accepted or exacted by the king in place of the military service due him under the feudal arrangements.
The promise to satisfy their demand for redress of wrongs in the past reign, a promise made at his election, remained unfulfilled; when the demand was repeated he answered it by seizing their castles and taking their children as hostages for their loyalty. The cost of his fruitless threats of war had been met by heavy and repeated taxation, by increased land tax and increased scutage.
Scutages shall be estimated at the same rate as in the time of Henry I; and no scutage or aid, except in the three general feudal cases the king's captivity, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marrying of his eldest daughter shall be imposed but by the great council of the kingdom; the prelates, earls, and great barons shall be called to this great council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a general summons of the sheriff.
The deputies from Louth having voted against his demand, were thrown into prison; but a direct petition from the Anglo-Irish to the King brought an order to de Windsor not to enforce the collection of these grants, and to remit in favour of the petitioners the scutage "on all those lands of which the Irish enemy had deprived them."
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