280, The Period of Constitution Making
side, for the more land and vassals a lord had the more
would be his benefit from these measures, and the king
himself as the greatest landholder and suzerain would
profit most of all. If the principle of Quia Emptores
were to be rigidly enforced, then, through the natural
operation of escheat, all freemen would finally come to
be tenants-in-chtef of the king—or rather his subjects,
for then all proper meaning of tenancy-in-chief would
have passed away.
The great conflict of 1297, although led by two earls
and outwardly as much an aifair of the nobility as the
risings of 1215 and 1258, was clearly less feudal. The
king was attempting to lead into the foreign service not
only his feudal levy, but every one in the country whose
lands furnished a yearly income of £20 or over; and his
taxation (there is now no hesitation in calling it such)
affected all classes.1 Thus the resistance, however
prominent a part in it was played by the nobility, was not
a resistance to feudal abuses primarily; it was not merely
to hold the king to his feudal contract, but to limit a
sovereign's unlawful assumption of power. Of course in
the thought of the moment, the baronage and the prelates
were acting on selfish motives while putting themselves
forward as champions of the nation; but such had been
the changes in society and such the development of taxa-
tion that when they were standing for themselves they
were standing for the nation and must recognise the fact.
The change from class feeling to national feeling was
coming—"the most important and least understood thing
in English history."2 The men of 1297 did not under-
stand the change, and believed that the difficulty lay in
the fact that the Charters had not been properly en-
forced. Over seventy years had passed since the wording
of the Charters had been changed. * While there is no
1 See below, pp. 407-409.
a Mcllwain, High Court of Parliament, p. 16.
t 3 The difficulty of an unchanging and finally unchangeable text, was at
times gotten around by a kind of supplement at the time of confirmation,
sometimes incorporated in the confirming order. Something of the sort