One of the clearest allusions to the growing feudalism of society is contained in a Capitulary of Charles issued the year before his death, in which it is ordained that no man shall be allowed to renounce his dependence on a feudal superior after he has received any benefit from him, except in one of four cases--if the lord have sought to slay his vassal, or have struck him with a stick, or have endeavored to dishonor his wife or daughter, or to take away his inheritance. In an expanded version of the same decree a fifth cause of renunciation is admitted--if the lord have failed to give to the vassal that protection which he promised when the vassal put his hands in the lord’s, and “commended” himself to his guardianship. Other allusions to the same system are to be found in the numerous Capitularies in which Charles urges the repeated complaint that the vassals of the Crown are either endeavoring to turn their _beneficia_ into _allodia_ or, if possessing property of both kinds,--a _beneficium_ under the Crown and an _allodium_ by purchase or inheritance from their fathers,--are starving and despoiling the royal _beneficium_ for the benefit of their own _allodium_. 3. An institution which was intended to check these and similar irregularities, and generally to uphold the imperial authority and the rights of the humbler classes against the encroachments of the territorial aristocracy, was the peculiarly Carolingian institution of _missi dominici_, or (as we may translate the words) “imperial commissioners.” These men may be likened to the emperor’s staff-officers, bearing his orders to distant regions, and everywhere, as his representatives, carrying on his ceaseless campaign against oppression and anarchy. The pivot of provincial government was still, as it had been in Merovingian times, the Frankish _comes_ or count, who had his headquarters generally in one of the old Roman cities, and governed from thence a district which was of varying extent, but which may be fairly taken as equivalent to an English county. Under him were the _centenarii_, who, originally rulers of that little tract of country known as the Hundred, now had a somewhat wider scope, and acted probably as _vicarii_ or representatives of the count throughout the district subject to his jurisdiction. These governors, especially the count, were doubtless generally men of wealth and great local influence. They had not yet succeeded in making their offices hereditary and transmitting the countship, as a title of nobility is now transmitted, from father to son. The strong hand of the central government prevented this change from taking place in Charles’s day, but it, too, like so much else that had a feudal tendency, was “in the air”; and it may have been partly in order to guard against this tendency and to keep his counts merely life-governors that Charles devised his institution of _missi_.