The capitulary quoted below belongs to the last year of the short reign of Carloman (882-884), son of Louis the Stammerer and grandson of Charles the Bald. It makes a considerable show of power, ordaining the punishment of criminals as confidently as if there had really been means to assure its enforcement. But in truth all the provisions in it had been embodied in capitularies of Carloman's predecessors with scarcely perceptible effect, and there was certainly no reason to expect better results now. With the nobles practicing, if not asserting, independence, the churches and monasteries heeding the royal authority hardly at all, the country being ravaged by Northmen and the people turning to the great magnates for the protection they could no longer get from the king, and the counts and _missi dominici_ making their lands and offices the basis for hereditary local authority, the king had come to be almost powerless in the great realm where less than a hundred years before Charlemagne's word, for all practical purposes, was law. Even Charlemagne himself, however, could have done little to avert the state of anarchy which conditions too strong for any sovereign to cope with had brought about. Source--Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges_ (Boretius ed.), Vol. II., pp. 371-375. [Sidenote: The keeping of the peace enjoined] =1.= According to the custom of our predecessors, we desire that in our palace shall prevail the worship of God, the honor of the king, piety, concord, and a condition of peace; and that that peace established in our palace by the sanction of our predecessors shall extend to, and be observed throughout, our entire kingdom. =2.= We desire that all those who live at our court, and all who come there, shall live peaceably. If any one, in breach of the peace, is guilty of violence, let him be brought to a hearing at our palace, by the authority of the king and by the order of our _missus_, as it was ordained by the capitularies of our predecessors, that he may be punished according to a legal judgment and may pay a triple composition with the royal ban.[240] =3.= If the offender has no lord, or if he flees from our court, our _missus_ shall go to find him and shall order him, in our name, to appear at the palace.[241] If he should be so rash as to disdain to come, let him be brought by force. If he spurns both us and our _missus_, and while refusing to obey summons is killed in resisting, and any of his relatives or friends undertake to exercise against our agents who have killed him the right of vengeance,[242] we will oppose them there and will give our agents all the aid of our royal authority. [Sidenote: The bishop's part in repressing crime]