Reluctant Knights and Jurors: Respites, Exemptions, and Public Obligations in the Reign of Henry III

In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, English kings developed a system of governance that required individuals and communities to provide unpaid service for the operation of the royal courts, administration, and army. Henry III, like his predecessors, demanded public services from landholders, and he extended the claims of the crown by introducing an ambitious scheme of distraint of knighthood. Yet he simultaneously released many of his subjects from their public obligations by issuing respites from taking up knighthood and exemptions from serving on juries or in offices.