Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II, A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the so-called right of prætaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of prætaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election, vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier. [Sidenote: The Seven Electors.] [Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]