The hand of Leovigild was no less hard upon the factious nobility of his own nation than upon the foreign enemies of Spain. He sought out and executed, one after another, all the more unruly of the Visigothic chiefs—‘all the race of men who had been wont to slay their kings,’ as a Frankish chronicler styled them. In their stead he appointed counts and dukes from among his own _comitatus_, whom he thought that he could trust. At last the king’s mandate was obeyed through all the realm, from Nismes to Seville, as it had never been obeyed before, and it seemed likely that a strong autocratic royalty would prevail among the Visigoths as it did among the Franks. Leovigild now fixed his court permanently at Toledo, and assumed all the splendour and state of the ancient Roman Caesars—the diadem, the sceptre, the purple robe, and golden throne. Before him the kings of the Visigoths had been indistinguishable in manners and apparel from their own nobles; they only differed from them by bearing the royal name, and keeping up a larger body of oath-bound _saiones_. At the same time that he fixed his seat at Toledo, Leovigild took another opportunity of asserting his power and independence. The coinage of the Visigoths had hitherto been a mere barbarous imitation of the imperial currency of Rome and Constantinople, but from henceforth the name of the Gothic king was placed upon all the gold _tremisses_ of Spain. For a few years Leovigild added the name of Justin II. to his own, but he soon cast away the last sign of the old dependence on the empire, and the inscription, LIVIGILDVS INCLITVS REX, was the sign of the disavowal of the last nominal connection of Spain with the heirs of Constantine.