was necessary for the king to have money, horses, grain, supplies,
etc., to defend the kingdom, and to build forts, and to maintain
bridges or defensive works; and that was the only object of taxation
in those times. Those were the only "aids"--they were called
"aids"--those were the only aids recognized. The first word for tax is
an "_aid_", granted voluntarily, in theory at least, by the barons to
the king, and for these three purposes only. The king's private purse
was easily made up by the enormous land he held himself. Even to-day
the crown is probably the largest land-owner in the kingdom, but at
the time of the Conquest, and for many years afterward, he certainly
owned an hundredfold as much, and that gave him enough revenue for his
purse; of course, in those days, money for such things as education,
highways, police, etc., was entirely out of their mind. They were
not as yet in that state of civilization. So the king got along
well enough for his own income with the land he owned himself as
proprietor. But very soon after the Norman Conquest the Norman kings
began to want more money. Nominally, of course, they always said they
wanted it for the defence of the realm. Then they wanted it, very
soon, for crusades; lastly, for their own favorites. They spent an
enormous amount of money on crusades and in the French wars; later
they began to maintain--always abroad--what we should call standing
armies, and they needed money for all those purposes. And money could
yet be only got from the barons, the nobility, or at least the landed
gentry, because the people, the agricultural laborers or serfs,
villeins, owned no land. Knights and barons paid part of the tax by
furnishing armed men, but still, as civilization increased, there was
a growing demand on the part of the Norman kings for money. Now
this money could be got only from the barons, and under the
Constitution--and here we first have to use that phrase--it could only
be got from the barons by their consent. That is, the great barons of