We have thus, even in the earliest times, the nucleus of a standing army, the means and instruments of aggrandizement both for the King and the praetorian cohorts themselves; practised and delighting in battle, ever ready to join in expeditions which promised adventure, honour or plunder, feasted in time of peace, enriched in time of war; holding the bond that united them to their chief as more sacred or stringent than even that of blood[311], and consequently ready for his sake to turn their arms against the free settlers in the district, whenever his caprice, his passion or his ambition called upon their services. In proportion as his power and dignity increased by their efforts and assistance, so their power and dignity increased; his rank and splendour were reflected upon all that surrounded him, till at length it became not only more honourable to be the unfree chattel of a prince, than the poor free cultivator of the soil, but even security for possession and property could only be attained within the compass of their body. As early as the period when the Frankish Law was compiled, we find the great advantage enjoyed by the Comes over the Free Salian or Ripuarian, in the large proportion borne by his wergyld, in comparison with that of the latter[312]. ----- Footnote 310: Beówulf, l. 5984 _seq._ Footnote 311: Ælfred excepts the lord, while he defines the cases in which a man may give armed assistance to his relative. The right of private feud is not to extend to that sacred obligation of fealty. Leg. Ælf. § 42. ----- The advantage derived by the community from the presence and protection of an armed force such as the gesíðas constituted, must have gradually produced a disposition to secure their favour even at the expense of the free nobles and settlers: and a Mark that wished to entrust its security and its interests to a powerful soldier, would probably soon acquiesce in his assuming a direction and leadership in their affairs, hardly more consistent with their original liberty, than the influence which a modern nobleman may establish by watching, as it is called, over the interests of the Registration. Even the old nobles by blood, who gradually beheld themselves forced down into a station of comparative poverty and obscurity, must have early hastened to give in their adhesion to a new order of things which held out peculiar prospects of advantage to themselves; and thus, the communities deserted by their natural leaders, soon sunk into a very subordinate situation, became portions of larger unities under the protection, and ultimately the rule, of successful adventurers, and consented without a struggle to receive their comites into those offices of power and distinction which were once conferred by popular election. ----- Footnote 312: Leg. Salic. Tit. lvii. cap. 1, 2. Leg. Rip. liii. cap. 1, 2. -----