an eyre and the accompanying highly detailed capitula itineris that put us in mind of the later colonial combination of commission and instructions was not apparently adapted to places without the realm. However, resort might be had to the practice of issuing the simple commission and simultaneously a series of other instruments with respect to particular powers. Thus, when John de Havering was made seneschal of Gascony, in 1305, six such documents were forthcoming: 15 the appointment, one dealing with salary, one conveying powers in litigation touching the crown, one granting authority over subordinates, and one directing the constable of Bordeaux to supply funds. Five of these could have been combined, and one suspects some small matter of fees was involved. In any event, this piecemeal method of delegation was not yet utterly obsolete in Edward Vl's time, for it was used to outfit a Lord Deputy in Ireland. 16 It is our opinion that contract also had something to do with the enlargement of particular commissions and that resort to this eventually had its effects upon common form. The circumstances that might lead to this were either the importance of the nominee or the toughness of the job ahead, or both. An early and famous example is the grant by Henry 111 to Simon de Montfort when he was made the King's lieutenant in Gascony (1248), an instrument that M. Bemont supposes was the result of Earl Simon's demands. 17 The mechanics of chaffering are disclosed by a document many years later —a series of propositions put by John Darcy to the Council that set out the conditions upon which he was willing to go to Ireland as justiciar. 18 These conditions include such matter as the power of pardon, later to be a usual clause in commissions. The responses to these articles are preserved (some a mere "fiat"), and although none of this appears in Darcy's commission, the creation of a contractual obligation is obvious. 19 The reduction of mutual engagements to more formal terms comes about, we think, from the extensive employment of indentures for the supply of troops in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 20 In these times the military 15 Maitland, Memoranda de Parliamento (!893)> 3 2 9 et seq. Cf. the batch issued in 1318 to William de Montecute (3 Rymer, Foedera, 162 et seq.). References are to the original edition of Rymer unless otherwise indicated as coming' from the Rolls edition. 16 1 Calendar of Patent Rolls Edward VI, 117, !33-36; cf. 2 ibid., 56-57. The additional warrants of authority here appear to have been used because certain functions were to be exercised in concert with other persons. 17 Bemont, Simon de Montfort (1884), 22. The appointment is printed at 264. 18 Baldwin, The King's Council in England during the Middle Ages, 473. 19 We have elsewhere considered the contractual quality of so-called statutes, such as the Confirmatio cartarum, where proposition and assent are involved (Goebel, Cases and Materials on the Development of Legal Institutions [1946 ed.], 166-67). Darcy's commission (1329) is in 2 Rymer, Foedera (Rolls ed.), pt. ii, 756 (1328/9). 20 On this, Lewis, Organization of Indentured Retinues in 14th Century England, in 27 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 4 ser., 29 et seq.; Prince, The