The Merovingian dynasty perished of decay, amid increasing anarchy. The crown passed, with the approval of the papacy, to an Austrasian mayor of the palace and his family, one of those mayors of the palace (i.e. chief officer of the king's household) who had been the last support of the preceding dynasty. It was then that there developed a certain number of institutions, which offered themselves as useful means of consolidating the political organism, and were in reality the direct precursors of feudalism. One was the royal benefice (_beneficium_), of which, without doubt, the Church provided both the model and, in the first instance, the material. The model was the _precaria_, a form of concession by which it was customary for the Church to grant the possession of her lands to free men; this practice she herself had copied from the five-years leases granted by the Roman exchequer. Gradually, however, the _precaria_ had become a concession made, in most cases, free and for life. As regards the material, when the Austrasian mayors of the palace (probably Charles Martel) wished to secure the support of the _fideles_ by fresh benefits, the royal treasury being exhausted, they turned to the Church, which was at that time the greatest landowner, and took lands from her to give to their warriors. In order to disguise the robbery it was decided--perhaps as an afterthought--that these lands should be held as _precariae_ from the Church, or from the monastic houses which had furnished them. Later, when the royal treasury was reorganized, the grants of land made by the kings naturally took a similar form: the _beneficium_, as a free grant for life. Under the Merovingians royal grants of land were in principle made in full ownership, except, as Brunner has shown, that provision was made for a revocation under certain circumstances. No special services seem to have been attached to the benefice, whether granted by the king or by some other person, but, in the second half of the 9th century at least, the possession of the benefice is found as the characteristic of the military class and the form of their pay. This we find clearly set forth in the treatise _de ecclesiis et capellis_ of Hincmar of Reims. The _beneficium_, in obedience to a natural law, soon tended to crystallize into a perpetual and hereditary right. Another institution akin to the _beneficium_ was the _senioratus_; by the _commendatio_, a form of solemn contract, probably of Germanic origin, and chiefly characterized by the placing of the hands between those of the lord, a man swore absolute fidelity to another man, who became his _senior_. It became the generally received idea (as expressed in the capitularies) that it was natural and normal for every free man to have a _senior_. At the same time a benefice was never granted unless accompanied by the _commendatio_ of the beneficiary to the grantor. As the most important _seniores_ were thus bound to the king and received from him their