mise

mise, in medieval England, any outlay of money and in particular the payment of taxation. The mise rolls (rotuli misae) of King John’s reign (1199–1216), which record payments made from the Exchequer to various departments of the royal household, illustrate the general meaning of the word. It was used to denote taxation in the document known as the Confirmatio Cartarum granted by Edward I in 1297, when the king promised not to treat as customary certain “aids, mises and prises” recently levied. The word was also used to indicate the settlement of a dispute by arbitration. Louis IX’s judgment (1264) on the quarrel between Henry III and the rebel English barons is known as the Mise of Amiens; after Henry’s defeat at Lewes in May 1264, an agreement known as the Mise of Lewes, of which the text is lost, was made between victors and vanquished.