CHAP. XXVIII.: Changes which happened in the great Offices, and in the Fiefs.

THE many changes introduced into the fiefs, in particular cases, seemed to spread so wide as to be productive of a general corruption. I took notice, that in the beginning several fiefs had been alienated in perpetuity;

but those were particular cases, and the fiefs in general preserved their nature; so that if the crown lost some fiefs, it substituted others in their stead. I observed likewise, that the crown had never alienated the great offices in perpetuity Some authors pretend that the county of Toulouse had been given away by Charles Martel, and passed by inheritance down to Raymond the last count; but if this be true, it was owing to some circumstances, which might have been an inducement to chuse the counts of Toulouse from among the children of the last possessor. ^†1295.

But Charles the Bald made a general regulation, which equally affected the great offices and the fiefs. He ordained, in his capitularies, that the See his capitulary of the year 877. tit. 53. art. 9. and 10. apud Carisiacum; this capitulary is relative to another of the same year and place, art. 3. ^†1296 counties should be given to the children of the count, and that this regulation should also take place in respect to the fiefs.

We shall see presently that this regulation received a more considerable extent, insomuch that the great offices and fiefs went even to distant relations. From thence it followed, that most of the lords, who before this time had held immediately of the crown, held now only mediately. Those counts who formerly administered justice in the king’s placita, and who led the freemen against the enemy, found themselves situated between the king and his freemen; and the king’s power was removed farther off another degree.

Again it appears from the capitularies The 3d capitulary of the year 812. art. 7. and that of the year 815. art. 6. on the Spaniards. The collection of the capitularies, book 5. art. 223. and the capitulary of the year 869. art. 2. and that of the year 877. art. 13. Baluzius’s edition. ^†1297, that the counts had benefices annexed to their countries, and vassals under them. When the counties became hereditary, the count’s vassals were no longer the immediate vassals of the king; and the benefices annexed to the counties were no longer the king’s benefices: the

counts grew powerful, because the vassals, whom they had already under them, enabled them to procure others.

In order to be convinced how much the monarchy was thereby weakened towards the end of the second race, we have only to cast an eye on what happened at the beginning of the third, when the multiplicity of rear-fiefs flung the great vassals into despair.

It was a custom As appears from Otho of Frisingen, of the actions of Frederic, book ii. chap. 29. ^†1298 of the kingdom, that when the elder brothers had given shares to their younger brothers, the latter paid homage to the elder; so that those shares were held of the lord paramount only as a rear-fief. Philip Augustus, the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers, Boulogne, S. Paul, Dampierre, and other lords, declared See the ordinance of Philip Augustus in the year 1209. in the new collection. ^†1299 that henceforward, whether the fief was divided by succession, or otherwise, the whole should be held always of the same lord, without any intermediation. This ordinance was not generally followed; for as I have elsewhere observed, it was impossible to make general ordinances at that time; but many of our customs were regulated by them.