Scutage was a medieval English tax levied on holders of a knight's fee under the feudal land tenure of knight-service.
The knights were allowed to "buy out" of the military service by paying scutage (a term derived from Latin scutum, "shield").
In practice, however, under Henry III (reigned 1216–1272), scutage rates usually amounted to three marks, but required the assent of the barons, and levies occurred only on adequate occasions.
[1] Meanwhile, a practice had arisen, possibly as early as Richard I's reign (1189–1199), of accepting from great barons special "fines" for permission not to serve in a campaign.
[1] J. F. Baldwin's The Scutage and Knight Service in England (1897), a dissertation printed at the University of Chicago Press, offers a major monograph on the subject (though not wholly free from error).
In 1896 appeared the Red Book of the Exchequer (Rolls series), which, with the Book of Fees (Public Record Office) and the Pipe Rolls (published by the Record Commission and the Pipe Roll Society), provides the chief record authority on the subject; but the editor misdated many of the scutages, and JH Round in his Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (privately issued) and his Commune of London and other Studies (1899) severely criticized his conclusions.