Scutage
form of taxation that allowed a knight to buy out of the military service due to the Crown.
Scutage was a medieval English tax levied on holders of a knight's fee under the feudal land tenure of knight-service. Under feudalism the king, through his vassals, provided land to knights for their support. The knights owed the king military service in return. The knights were allowed to "buy out" of the military service by paying scutage (a term derived from Latin scutum, "shield").
As time passed the kings began to impose a scutage on holders of knight's fees, whether or not the holder was actually a knight.
General information
The institution existed under Henry I (reigned 1100–1135) and Stephen (reigned 1135–1154), when it occurs as scutagium, scuagium or escuagium. The creation of fractions of knights' fee probably hastened its introduction: the holders of such fractions could only discharge their obligation via scutage. The increasing use of mercenaries in the 12th century would also make a money payment of greater use to the crown.
Separate levies of scutage received the names of the campaigns for which they were raised, as "the scutage of Toulouse" (or "great scutage"), "the scutage of Ireland", and so forth. The levy demanded from each fee one mark (13s.
The public source identifies “Scutage” as form of taxation that allowed a knight to buy out of the military service due to the Crown. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Scutage, form and taxation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131887. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1100, 1135 and 1154.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scutage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.