Conrad showed a shrewd sense of self-interest in posing as the friend of the lesser tenants against the great vassals of the crown. Whether he also secured the best interests of Germany is not quite so clear. The great vassals were strong enough to maintain order; the lesser feudalists had neither their resources nor their traditions of statecraft. It was too late to revive with any real effect the national tie of allegiance, and the scanty means of an early mediæval king had always made somewhat illusory great schemes of national unity. Conrad did his best for the protection of the under-tenants by establishing for them also that hereditary possession of their benefices which gave them some sort of permanent position over against their overlords. This was secured in Germany by a mere recognition of the growing custom of heredity, though in Italy a formal law was necessary to attain the same end. Another advantage won by Conrad by this action was that in securing the recognition of the principle of heredity in every fief, he made a long step towards securing the heredity of the crown. For Conrad, much more distinctly than his Saxon predecessors, sought definitely to make both the royal and imperial crown hereditary in his house. As a further step towards breaking down the greater nobility, he strove to get rid of the national duchies altogether. He persuaded the Bavarians to elect the young King Henry as their duke, and, on the death of his last step-son, gave Swabia also to his destined successor. On the death of his old rival, Conrad of Carinthia, the great Carinthian mark was also handed over to Henry. At the end of Conrad’s reign, Saxony and Lorraine were the only duchies still held by independent princes. Like his predecessors, Conrad used the bishops as the means of carrying on the government and checking the growth of the lay aristocracy. Following the example of the chief ecclesiastics, he encouraged the development of a new class of hereditary _ministeriales_, who devoted their lives to the service of the crown, and soon built up a new official body that enabled his successors to largely dispense with the interested help of the episcopate in carrying on the daily task of the administration of the kingdom.