The second great meeting comprised only the seniores and the king’s immediate councillors[477]. It appears to have been concerned with questions of revenue as well as general policy. But its main object was to prepare the business and anticipate the necessities of the coming year. It was a deliberative assembly[478] in which questions afterwards to be submitted to the general meeting were discussed and agreed upon. The members of this council were bound to secrecy. When the public business had been concluded, they formed a court of justice and of appeal, for the settlement of litigation in cases which transcended the powers or skill of the ordinary tribunals[479]. ----- Footnote 477: Hincmar, c. 30. Footnote 478: These persons were in the strictest sense of the word προβούλοι, and their acts προβουλεύματα. No doubt their body comprised the principal officers engaged in the administration of the State. Footnote 479: Hincmar, c. 33. ----- The general councils were held, in fine weather, in the open air, or, if occasion required, in houses devoted to the purpose. The ecclesiastics and the magnates, for so we may call them, sat apart from the multitude; but even they had separate chambers, in which the clergy could deliberate upon matters purely ecclesiastical, the magnates upon matters purely civil: but when the object of their enquiry was of a mixed character, they were called together[480]. Before these chambers the questions were brought which had been prepared at the preceding meeting, or arose from altered circumstances: the opinion of the members was taken upon them, and when agreed to they were presented to the king, who agreed or disagreed in turn, as the case might be. While the new laws or administrative regulations were under discussion, the king, unless especially invited to be present at the deliberations, occupied himself in mixing with the remaining multitude, receiving their presents, welcoming their leaders, conversing with the new comers, sympathizing with the old, congratulating the young, and in similar employments, both in spirituals and temporals, says Hincmar[481]. When the prepared business had been disposed of, the king propounded detailed interrogatories to the chambers, respecting the state of the country in the different districts, or what was known of the intentions and actions of neighbouring countries; and these having been answered or reserved for consideration, the assembly broke up. When any new chapters, hence called Capitula, had been added to the ancient law or folkright, special messengers (_missi_) were dispatched into the provinces to obtain the assent and signatures of the free men, and the chapters thus ratified became thenceforth the law of the land. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the proposals of the princes were also presented to the assembled freemen, the _reliqua multitudo_, in arms upon the spot, and that in the old German fashion they carried them by acclamation? -----