The analogy of popular meetings in other ages and countries will warrant the belief that under ordinary circumstances the people would be greatly swayed by the policy of their leaders, but the fact remains that the ultimate appeal was to the people. So with the local judi-cial meetings: the position of the elected princeps is " rather that of president than of judge; " all the free men sit as his assessors. "Doubtless they both declared the law and weighed the evidence." The authority of the princeps was in all cases limited : " De minoribus rebus principes consultant; de majoribus omnes." Even the prerogatives of the monarchical chiefs were subject to strict limitations. Their position was one of high honour but not of irresponsible power. The practical influence of the chief, whether exalted to royal dignity or not, depended largely upon the strength of his comitatus, or household retinue. This institution, " one of the strangest but most lasting features " of early Aryan civilization, was an arrangement " partly private and partly public in its character," which served to furnish " a sort of supplement to an otherwise imperfect organization." The comitatus was a voluntary bond of partial vassalage, intended for mutual protection and support, by which a freeman, even a man of noble birth, attached himself to a more powerful lord (Maford,s princeps). At the table of his lord the free companion, as he was called {comes, gesith), found a comfortable seat; from his lord he received his equipment for war or the chase (heregeatwe, heriot), which reverted to the lord at his death. In return he was bound to espouse the cause of his lord as against all men and by all means. The position of a favoured gesith was one of comfort and social importance ; but involving, as it did, the surrender of all freedom of individual action, it probably entailed a certain diminution of political status. The tie of the comitatus, when coupled with the tenure of land, gives us the germ from which the whole feudal system was developed. It has been commonly held, apparently on the authority of Montesquieu, that the Frankish con-quests in Gaul were effected by independent nobles fighting each with a powerful comitatus at his back; that the lands so conquered were immediately parcelled out by them among their comités upon terms of military service and special fidelity ; and that the Merwing state from the first was built up on the feudal principle of vassalage. The sound view appears to be that—as in Britain, so in Gaul—the Germanic tribes came over as " nations in arms," " with their flocks and their herds, their wives and their little ones that they brought their Germanic social and political organization with them ; and that the Merwing kingdom was mainly constructed on that basis—subject to modifications introduced perforce by the circumstances of the conquest. In Britain it is clear that the primitive political institutions were introduced en bloc, and took root ; of the agrarian settlement effected, evidence is lacking dur-ing the first centuries of the new order. When trustworthy data begin to appear feudalism has already made large inroads on primitive alodialism. In Gaul the chain of evidence is continuous, and it is beyond doubt that under the first dynasty the tenure of land was still mainly alodial ; that all the people were bound to be faithful to the king as a national duty, and not by virtue of special land ten-ure ; that " the gift of an estate by the king involved no defined obligation of service," all the nation being still bound to military service ; that " the only comités were the antrustions, and these few in number and that the supposed larger class of comités, the leudes, were in fact the whole body of the king's good subjects, in Anglo-Saxon phrase, his "hold."