The Emperor, who was the greatest seigneur as the owner of vast domains and of a large number of persons, ruled at the same time over many other seigneurs, the big freeholders of land and serf. It may be supposed also that there might have been many minor freemen besides, who were not rich enough to possess sufficient serfs to cultivate their grounds for them and, therefore, were obliged to support themselves by their own toil. Nothing positive is known, however, about them, if they ever really existed. The right of a seigneur over his clients was almost absolute, even the lives and chattels of his clients being at his disposal, though the seigneur himself lay under the jurisdiction of the Emperor. Some of the seigneurs were men of the same race as the imperial family, their ancestors having helped in the conquest of the country. Others were scions of the imperial family itself. It is very probable, nevertheless, that no insignificant portion of this seigneur class was of a blood different from that of the imperial family, having sprung from the aboriginal race, or from immigrants other than the stock to which the imperial family belonged. The extent of the land over which a seigneur held sway, was in general not very great, so that it cannot be fairly compared with any modern Japanese province or _kuni_. Side by side with these seigneurs who were lords of their lands, there was another class of seigneurs, who were conspicuous, not, strictly speaking, on account of the land which they _de facto_ possessed, but on account of their being chieftains of certain groups of people. Some of these groups were formed by men pursuing the same occupation. Groups thus formed were those of fletchers, shield-makers, jewellers, mirror-makers, potters, and so forth. Performers of religious rites, fighting-men, and scribes, too, were grouped in this class. It must be especially noticed that groups of men-at-arms and of scribes contained a good many foreign elements, far more distinctly than other groups. Scribes, though their profession as a craft was of a higher and more important nature than others, were, as was explained in the last chapter, exclusively of foreign blood. On account of this there was more than one set of such immigrants, and we had in Japan several groups of scribes. As to soldiers or men-at-arms, those who served in the first stage of the conquest of this country must have been of the same stock as the conquering race. Later on, however, quite a number of men who were not properly to be called Japanese, as, for example, the Ainu and the Haito, began to be enlisted into the service of the Emperor, and notwithstanding their difference in blood from that of the predominant stock, their fidelity to the Emperor was almost incomparable, and furnished many subjects for our old martial poems.