But whatever the origin of the name, it is pretty clear that the mayor of the palace was originally but the chief domestic of the king, he to whom it appertained to order the ceremonies of the court, to rule the royal pages, probably to superintend the repairs of the royal dwelling. Hence not only reigning kings but queens dowager, and even princesses, had their _majores domus_, and it even seems probable that one king might have several mayors, each superintending one of his various palaces. This, however, is only true of the early days of the mayoralty. As chief man of business to an imperfectly educated, care-encumbered, pleasure-loving king, the mayor of the palace took one burden after another off the royal shoulders, and at the same time drew one source of power after another into his own hands. Especially, at a pretty early period of his career, he seems to have acquired the supreme control of the royal treasury, superintending the collection of the taxes, administering the royal domains, eventually acquiring the power of granting those _beneficia_ or (as they would be called in the language of a later day) those fiefs, by which on the one hand the royal property was so seriously diminished, but on the other hand the friendship of an important nobleman might, at a crisis of the mayor’s fortunes, be so easily secured. From the first appearance of the _major domus_ in Frankish history till the year when the last _major domus_ was crowned King of the Franks, thereby absorbing the lower office in the higher, a period of about 170 years intervened, and during that long space of time these anomalous functionaries assume very different shapes and exercise their powers in very different ways. Sometimes, especially in the earlier years of this period, they are the vigorous upholders of the rights of the crown against a turbulent aristocracy, and then the mayor of the palace seems to anticipate Richelieu. Sometimes they appear at the head of the aristocracy and force their way, almost in spite of the king, into the palace from which they take their title, and then they remind us of the Guises and the Condés of a later day. In Neustria and Burgundy no mayor of the palace who arises there succeeds in making his office hereditary. In Austrasia there is a very early tendency towards hereditary succession in the office, and five generations of able men wielding its growing powers become at last in name, as well as in fact, supreme. It is out of the question to give here any detailed description of the development of the mayoralty of the palace during that space of nearly two centuries, but one or two illustrations drawn from the history of the times may show what manner of men the mayors were, and how they wielded their power.