There was a period in early Frankish history, when the _Comes_ or _Graphio_ was a royal deputy, answerable for the due collection of the royal revenue, and exercising over the population, dependant on the Crown, as fiscal-judge, a jurisdiction which did not extend over the allodial proprietary. None of these attributes belonged to the _Count_ of a later era, who, no longer either a fiscal-judge or a collector of the royal revenue, was simply a greater baron, enjoying only the title and dignity of his former office. A similar change was in progress amongst the Anglo-Saxons, for in the reign of Ini, the king’s ealdorman was the leading judge of the shire, forfeiting his district for compounding a felony; and in Alfred’s days, no man of a certain class could pass from one shire to another without permission from the king’s ealdorman, who was still connected with the shire as the leading personage in the _Gemote_, and appealed to, on certain occasions, as an official. In Edward’s laws, however, and in the laws of subsequent kings, the sovereign addresses his _Gerefas_ alone, without any allusion to the jurisdiction of the ealdorman; and though the presence of the bishop and the ealdorman at the _Shire-Gemote_ was required by Edgar’s law, confirmed by Canute, the Norman Conquest seems to have found the sheriff, a royal official, and not the _Earl_--who was a _Duke_ rather than a _Count_ at this period--the presiding officer in the county court.[283] It appears to have been one of the leading features of the policy introduced by Alexander and David, to carry out an alteration of this character in Scotland, where the Earl and the Thane--the Mormaor and the Maor--like the Jarl and the _Lenderman_ and _Stallr_ amongst the Northmen, were still invested with the full authority of royal officials. In the Welsh Commot, which was supposed to be divided by law, or custom, into twelve _maenols_, only one of these divisions was the actual property of the _Maer_, who exercised a joint authority with the _Cynghellwr_ over the whole district, one-third of the Commot being composed of _Taog-trefs_, occupied by royal villeins, in other words, being royal _demesne_; and from the division of the crown lands in Scotland at a later period into _Thanages_ and _Demesne_, it may be gathered that the thanage was by this time restricted to the actual property of the thane, who, no longer exercising authority over the demesne as a royal official, was simply a hereditary tenant by rent, holding by Scottish service instead of by knight service. In the same manner, the authority of the Earl or Mormaor--a character unknown in the principality of Wales, but who was simply a high steward or _Maer_ on a greater scale,--appears to have been limited to his actual earldom, the functions which he had hitherto discharged as a royal deputy devolving on the _Vicecomes_, an official newly introduced, and directly dependant on the sovereign; in certain cases standing in the same