Both in Normandy and in England, in the 12th century, the
two recognized occasions on which, by custom, the lord could
demand ``aid,'' were (1) the knighting of his eldest son, (2)
the marriage of his eldest daughter; but while in England the
third occasion was, according to Glanvill, as in Normandy, his
payment of ``relief'' on his succession, it was, according to
the Great Charter (1215), the lord's ransom from captivity.
By its provisions, the king covenanted to exact an ``aid''
from his barons on these three occasions alone--and then only
a ``reasonable'' one--except by ``the common counsel'' of his
realm. Enormous importance has been attached to this provision,
as establishing the principle of taxation by consent, but its
scope was limited to the barons (and the city of London), and
the word ``aids'' was omitted from subsequent issues of the
charter. The barons, on their part, covenanted to claim from
their feudal tenants only the above three customary aids. The
last levy by the crown was that of James I. on the knighting of
his eldest son (1609) and the marriage of his daughter (1613).
From at least the days of Henry I. the term ``aid'' was also
applied (1) to the special contributions of boroughs to the
king's revenue, (2) to a payment in lieu of the military
service due from the crown's knights. Both these occur
on the pipe roll of 1130, the latter as auxilium militum
(and possibly as auxilium comitatus.) The borough ``aids''
were alternatively known as ``gifts'' (dona), resembling
in this the ``benevolences'' of later days. When first met
with, under Henry I., they are fixed round sums, but under
Henry II. (as the Dialogue of the Exchequer explains) they
were either assessed on a population basis by crown officers
or were sums offered by the towns and accepted by them as
sufficient. In the latter case the townsfolk were collectively
responsible for the amount. The Great Charter, as stated
above, extended specially to London the limitation on baronial
``aids,'' but left untouched its liability to tallage, a lower
and more arbitrary form of taxation, which the towns shared
with the crown's demesne manors, and which London . resisted in
vain. The two exactions, although distinct, have to be studied
together, and when in 1296-1297 Edward I. was forced to his
great surrender, he was formerly supposed by historians to
have pledged himself, under De tallagio non concedendo,
to levy no tallage or aid except by common consent of his
people. It is now held, however, that he limited this
concession to ``aides, mises,'' and ``prises,'' retaining
the right to tallage. Eventually, by a statute of 1340, it
was provided that the nation should not be called upon ``to
make any common aid or sustain charge'' except by consent of
parliament. The aids spoken of at this period are of yet
another character, namely, the grant of a certain proportion
of all ``movables'' (i.e. personal property), a form of
taxation introduced about 1188 and now rapidly increasing in
importance. These subsidies were conveniently classed under
the vague term ``aids,'' as were also the grants made by
the clergy in convocation, the term covering both feudal and
non-feudal levies from the higher clergy and proportions not
only of ``movables'' but of ecclesiastical revenues as well.
The ``knight's aid'' of 1130 spoken of above is probably
identical with auxilium exercitus spoken of in the oldest
custumals of Normandy, where the phrase appears to represent
what was known in England as ``scutage.'' Even in England
the phrase ``quando Rex accipit auxilium de militibus''
occurs in 1166 and appears to be loosely used for scutage.
The same loose use enabled the early barons to demand
``aid'' from their tenants on various grounds, such as their
indebtedness to the Jews, as is well seen in the Norfolk
fragments of returns to the Inquest of Sheriffs (1170).
Sheriff's aid was a local payment of a fixed nature paid
in early days to the sheriff for his service. It was the
subject of a hot dispute between Henry II. and Becket in 1163.
AUTHORITIES.--Stubbs' Constitutional History and
Select Charters; M'Kechnie's Magna Carta; Pollock and
Maitland's History of English Law; Maitland's Domesday
Book and Beyond; Dialogus de Scaccario (Oxford, 1892);
Madox's History of the Exchequer; Round's Feudal
England and The Commune of London; The Pipe Rolls
(Record Commission and Pipe Roll Society). (J. H. R.)
AIGRETTE (from the Fr. for egret, or lesser white heron),
the tufted crest, or head-plumes of the egret, used for
adorning a woman's head-dress, the term being also given
to any similar ornament, in gems, &c. An aigrette is also
worn by certain ranks of officers in the French army. By
analogy the word is used in various sciences for feathery
excrescences of like appearance, as for the tufts on the heads
of insects, the feathery down of the dandelion, the luminous
rays at the end of electrified bodies, or the luminous rays
seen in solar eclipses, diverging from the moon's edge.
AIGUES-MORTES, a town of south-eastern France, in the
department of Gard 25 m. S.S.W. of Nimes, on a branch
line of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee railway. Pop. (1906)
3577. Aigues-Mortes occupies an isolated position in the
marshy plain at the western extremity of the Rhone delta,
2 1/2 m. from the Golfe du Lion. It owes its celebrity to the
medieval fortifications of remarkable completeness with which
it is surrounded. They form a parallelogram 596 yds. long
by 149 yds. broad, and consist of crenellated walls from 25
to 36 ft. in height, dominated at intervals by towers. Of
these, the Tour de Constance, built by Louis IX., is the
most interesting; it commands the northwestern angle of the
ramparts, and contains two circular, Vaulted chambers, used as
prisons for Protestants after the revocation of the edict of
Nantes. The remainder of the fortifications were built in
the reign of Philip III. Aigues-Mortes is the meeting-place
of several canals connecting it with Beaucaire, with Cette,
with the Lesser Rhone and with the Mediterranean, on which
it has a small port. Fishing and the manufacture of soda are
the chief industries with which the town is connected. It
has trade in coal, oranges and other fruits, and in wine. In
the surrounding country there are important vineyards, which
are preserved from disease by periodical submersion. There
is a statue in the town in memory of Louis IX. who embarked
from Aigues-Mortes in 1248 and 1270 for the seventh and eighth
crusades. To further the prosperity of the town a most liberal
charter was granted to it, and in addition the trade of the port
was artificially fostered by a decree requiring that every vessel
navigating within sight of its lights should put in there.
This ordinance remained in force till the reign of Louis XIV.
AIGUILLE (Fr. for needle), the sharp jagged points above
the snow-line, standing upon the massif of a mountain split
by frost action along joints or planes of cleavage with
sides too steep for snow to rest upon them. Aiguilles are
thus the forms remaining from the splitting up of the high
ridges with houseroof structure into detached pinnacles.
AIGUILLETTE (Fr. diminutive of AIGUILLE, a needle; the
obsolete English form is ``aglet''), originally a tag of
metal, often made of precious metals and richly chased,
attached to the end of a lace or ribbon, and pointed, so
as to pass more easily through eyelet holes. The term
was, in time, applied to any bright ornament or pendant
for the dress made of metal, and is now specially used of
ornamental cords and tags of gold and silver lace, worn on
naval and military uniforms. The aiguillette is fastened
to the shoulder, the various cords hanging down therefrom
being fastened at their other end on the front of the coat.
AIGUILLON, EMMANUEL ARMAND DE WIGNEROD DU PLESSIS DE
RICHELIEU, DUC D' (1720-1782), French statesman, nephew
of the marechal de Richelieu, was born on the 31st of July
1720. He entered the army at the age of seventeen, and
at the age of nineteen was made colonel of the regiment of
Brie. He served in the campaigns in Italy during the War of
the Austrian Succession, was seriously wounded at the siege
of Chateau-Dauphin (1744), was taken prisoner (1746) and
was made marechal de camp in 1748. His marriage in 1740
with Louise Felicite de Brehan, daughter of the comte de
Plelo, coupled with his connexion with the Richelieu family,
gave, him an important place at court. He was a member of
the so-called parti devot, the faction opposed to Madame de
Pompadour, to the Jansenists and to the parlement, and his
hostility to the new ideas drew upon him the anger of the
pamphleteers. In 1753 he was appointed commandant (governor)
of Brittany and soon became unpopular in that province, which
had retained a large number of privileges called ``liberties.''
He first came into collision with the provincial estates on the
question of the royal imposts (1758), but was then blamed for
his inertia in the preparation of a squadron against England
(1759), and finally alienated the parlement of Brittany by
violating the privileges of the province (1762). In June 1764
the king, at the instance of d'Aiguillon, quashed a decree of
the parlement forbidding the levying of new imposts without the
consent of the estates, and refused to receive the remonstrances
of the parlement against the duke. On the 11th of November
1765 La Chalotais, the procureur of the parlement, was
arrested, but whether at the instigation of d'Aiguillon is not
certain. The conflict between d'Aiguillon and the Bretons
lasted two years. In the place of the parlement, which had
resigned, d'Aiguillon organized a tribunal of more or less
competent judges, who were ridiculed by the pamphleteers
and ironically termed the bailliage d'Aiguillon. In 1768
the duke was forced to suppress this tribunal, and returned
to court, where he resumed his intrigue with the parti
devot and finally obtained the dismissal of the minister
Choiseul (December 24, 1770). When Louis XV., acting on
the advice of Madame Dubarry, reorganized the government
with a view to suppressing the resistance of the parlements,
d'Aiguillon was made minister of foreign affairs, Maupeou
and the Abbe Terray (1715-1778) also obtaining places in the
ministry. The new ministry, albeit one of reform, was very
unpopular, and was styled the ``triumvirate.'' All the failures
of the government were attributed to the mistakes of the
ministers. Thus d'Aiguillon was blamed for having provoked
the coup d'etat of Gustavus III., king of Sweden, in 1772,
although the instructions of the comte de Vergennes, the
French ambassador in Sweden, had been written by the minister,
the duc de la Vrilliere. D'Aiguillon, however, could do
nothing to rehabilitate French diplomacy; he acquiesced in
the first division of Poland, renewed the Family Compact,
and, although a supporter of the Jesuits, sanctioned the
suppression of the society. After the death of Louis XV.
he quarrelled with Maupeou and with the young queen, Marie
Antoinette, who demanded his dismissal from the ministry
(1774). He died, forgotten, in 1782. In no circumstances
had he shown any special ability. He was more fitted for
intrigue than for government, and his attempts to restore
the status of French diplomacy met with scant success.
See Memoires du ministere du duc d'Aiguillon (3rd ed.,
Paris and Lyons, 1792), probably written by J. L. Soulavie.
On d'Aiguillon's governorship of Brittany see Carre, La
