John Horace Round

“ KNIGHT-SERVICE, the dominant and distinctive tenure of land under the feudal system. It is associated in its origin with that development in warfare which made the mailed horseman, armed with lance and sword, the most important factor in battle. Till within recent years it was believed that knight-service was developed out of the liability, under the English system, of every five hides to provide one soldier in war. ”

“ Similar returns were made for Normandy, and are valuable for the light they throw on its system of knight-service.
The principle of commuting for money the obligation of military service struck at the root of the whole system, and so complete was the change of conception that “tenure by knight-service of a mesne lord becomes, first in fact and then in law, tenure by escuage (i.e. scutage) .” By the time of Henry III., as Bracton states, the test of tenure was scutage; liability, however small, to scutage payment made the tenure military. ”