Aids.

Aids. These were originally payments to which every tenant in chivalry was liable. (1) To ransom the person of the lord when taken prisoner; (2) To make his eldest son a knight; and (3) To provide a suitable portion to his eldest daughter on her marriage. Tenants in socage were liable only to the latter two, and the mesne lords were prohibited by Magna Charta from exacting more than these three. The last feudal aid exacted was in 1346 for knighting the Black Prince. These incidents of tenure were abolished in 1672. Soutage (q.v.) and Tallage (q.v.), and the Benevolence (q.v.), were arbitrary taxes of this kind which led to disputes between English kings and their subjects down to King Edward III.'s reign, although the right to levy such taxes without the consent of the realm was formally renounced in the confirmation of charters by Edward I. The name of aid was, however, also applied, down to the time of William III., to parliamentary taxes for extraordinary purposes, including the land-tax. See FEUDALISM, TAXATION.