The name given to the assembling of men of less power and wealth around the greater men had been "comitatus," in Germany. In Rome it had been the custom for a prominent citizen to have a troop of "clientes," or clients, men of the people who came to him to ask him for advice about any legal claims that they were making, or any injustice under which they were suffering. They would receive his advice, and perhaps he would speak for them when their case came before the court. In return, these clients would support their patron, as the great man was called, with their votes whenever they could be of use to him, and they would even accompany him about the city, in times of disturbance, as a kind of bodyguard. The Frankish kings, we may note, had a bodyguard for their special protection, and this bodyguard was held in very high estimation, so much so that if one of them were killed the killer, or his relations, had {83} to pay a penalty three times as heavy as they would have had to pay for the killing of any other free man. So the service of the vassal to his feudal lord was only an extension of the kind of service that the client did for the patron; and so too the service of protection that the lord gave to the vassal might easily grow out of the protection and help given by the patron, to the client. [Sidenote: The "precarium"] And then there was another custom common in the Roman and Gothic society which helped to form the relationship between the vassal and the feudal lord. If a free man were landless he was in a very poor position. It was beneath his dignity to serve as a slave, or even as a "villein," which was a position in society between that of a slave and a free man. But if he were without land, he had no means of livelihood; and as his life was of no value to anyone he had no one to defend him. Therefore it had become usual for these landless free men to come to some large land-owner and offer him to do him certain service if he would grant, or lend, them a piece of land, or possibly the use of a mill--a water-mill for grinding corn--or some other grant out of which they might get a livelihood. If this were granted them, they would give their service and help to the lord. The Latin word for "to pray" is "precari," and so this relationship between the lord and the tenant was called "precarium," because the tenant had "prayed" the lord for it. I have called it a "grant, or loan." It was not a gift, because the lord might take it back at any time, and so end the tenancy, nor could the tenant pass on his right in the land, or whatever it might be, to his heirs. If the lord did allow it to go on to these heirs, they would probably have to pay him some "fine," before they succeeded to it, as well as undertaking to continue the service which the first tenant, when the grant was made, had promised. {84}