138 SERVILE BURDENS
Not only did the peasant find his freedom to use the things he
saw about him sadly circumscribed by the power of the lord, but
he also found himself controlled in many other ways. He was
subjected to a series of money payments, all of which emphasised
his servile condition. Rent he paid, as did the freeman, and
services he rendered in addition, as we have seen, but still more
was demanded of him. He was forced to make payments from
time to time to meet divers demands of his lord, and these were
often of an uncertain nature, or came at times of stress. Of these
the most onerous were tallage and heriot, and each of them
deserves some detailed consideration.
Tallage is defined by Vinogradoff as "a rent on the border-
line between personal subjection and political subordination",1
and by the thirteenth century it had come to be looked upon as
one of the tokens of serfdom. And this was not an unreasonable
view, for the right of one man to exact from another whatever
sum he thought desirable, and to do this at uncertain intervals,
certainly established an a priori case of complete subjection. It
had its justification in the theory slowly formulated by the law that
the serfs all belonged to his lord, and therefore the lord could
take what was his own when and to what extent it seemed best to
him. Thus in the stricter custornals we constantly read that the
amount of tallage was fixed ad vohmtatem domini, and the serfs
had no redress if one, two or more calls were made on them, even
in the same year. On the other hand, the serfs steadily worked to
obtain some certainty in these things; and, from the twelfth
century onward, we find the lord's rights modified and controlled.
The peasants got the principle established of a yearly tallage ad
voluntatem domini quolibet anno, or of tallage "according to the
custom of the manor". Little by little the principle was estab-
lished that both the amount and also the frequency of the charge
became matters of certainty. Once this was achieved it was easy
to regard tallage as an additional rent charge merely, and once its
uncertainty was removed there was nothing in such a payment
which marked it out specifically as a servile burden.
But this was a state of affairs won only after much travail.
"Tallage at will", with all the uncertainty it entailed, became
1 Villainage, 162.