ABSTRACT
Odo is portrayed haranguing his fellows and referring without shame to the daily rewards they received from the king: 'to the mind we will justly lose both wages and praise, nor will we any longer deserve to feed upon the King's bread' if they failed to rescue a captured baron. When the time came for them to be knighted they insisted that he gird on their swords: 'for we are his and he is our advocate'. In-each case the key question to be posed is whether the individual providing military service saw his fate, not just the provision of his next meal, as bound up with the lord he followed. The Dialogue of the Exchequer assumed that the military service of fee-holders was to be provided at their own expense and was pledged to the crown, with the result that it could not be avoided in one form or another.
