Besides dukes and counts, the king kept other officials in the provinces. These were the _domestici_ who were charged with the control of the royal domain-land throughout the kingdom. They were the king’s private bailiffs for his own possessions, acting much as the ‘Procurators of the Fiscus’ had once acted for the Roman emperors in the ancient provinces. There were other _domestici_ in the palace, whose offices were also financial, and who must apparently have served as underlings to the high-treasurer. The revenue of the Merovings seems chiefly to have fallen under four heads. [Sidenote: Revenue.] The first was the profits of the royal domain, worked by the _domestici_. The second was the produce of custom dues, levied both on the land and the sea-frontier of the empire. The third was the produce of fines and compositions in the law courts, of which one-third always went to the king. But the fourth, and most important, was the regular annual tribute of the countships. Each district was assessed in the king’s books for a defined sum, and this the count had to raise and send in, on his own responsibility. It seems that at first only the Gallo-Roman districts were charged with tribute. Theudebert, the grandson of Chlodovech, we are told, first subjected the native Frankish districts to the impost, a grievance so deeply felt that, when he died, the Austrasians rose, and slew Parthenius, the minister who had suggested to the king this method of increasing his revenue. From this short sketch of the constitution of the Frankish realm it will be seen that its organisation lay half-way between the almost purely Teutonic forms of the government of early England and the almost purely Roman methods employed by Theodoric the Great in Italy. This is what might have been expected. The Frankish kingdom was by no means a primitive Teutonic state, but it was far more so than the Ostrogothic realm in Italy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII THE VISIGOTHS IN SPAIN 531-603 Weakness of the Visigothic kingdom—Civil wars and murders of Kings—The Romans invade Andalusia, 554—Reign of Leovigild—He restores the power of the Visigoths—His conquests—Rebellion and death of his son Hermenegild—Reign of Reccared—He converts the Goths to Catholicism—Consequences of this conversion. We have already, while dealing with the fortunes of Chlodovech the Frank and Theodoric the Great, related the story of the expulsion of the Visigoths from Aquitaine, and of the extinction of their royal house—the heaven-born Balts—by the deaths of Alaric II. and Amalric, both slain by the sword of the Franks.