The Anglosaxon Court appears to have been modelled upon the same plan as that of the Frankish Emperors: our documents do not however permit us to judge whether this was the case before a sufficient intercourse had taken place to render a positive imitation probable. It is not at all unlikely that, from the very first establishment of the Comitatus, the possession of those household offices was coveted, which brought the holder into closer personal connection with the prince: and more or less of dependence could be of little moment with those who had erected into a system the voluntary sacrifice of the holiest of all possessions, their freedom of action. Hence we can readily account for the assumption by men nobly born of offices about the royal person, which were at first directly and immediately menial[200]. Nor, as the opportunities of personal aggrandisement through favouritism or affection were multiplied, does it seem strange to us that these offices should assume a character of dignity and real power, which, however little in consonance with their original intention, yet made them objects of ambition with the wealthy and the noble. We do not any longer wonder at the struggles of dukes and barons for the offices of royal cupbearer at a coronation, or Steward or Chamberlain of the Household, because time and the attribution of judicial or administrative functions have given those offices a distinction which at the outset they did not possess: and we see without surprise the electors of Germany personally serving at his table the member of their body whom they had invested with imperial rank; and, when they fixed the throne hereditarily in him, providing for the succession in their own families of Butlers, Stewards, Marshals or Chancellors of the empire. ----- Footnote 200: Speaking of the Pincerna regis Æðelstani, one of the great officers of the Household, in the early part of the tenth century, William of Malmesbury says, “Itaque cum forte die solenni vinum propinaret,” etc. Gest. Reg. § ii. 139. ----- As the progress of society drew larger and larger numbers of men into the circle of princely influence, and, by withdrawing them from the jurisdiction of the free courts, rendered a systematic establishment of the Lord’s court more necessary, the officers who were charged with the superintendence of the various royal vassals, rose immeasurably in the social scale. Thus the Major Domus or Mayor of the palace, at first only a steward, who had to regulate the affairs of the Household, gradually assumed the management of those of the kingdom, and ended by placing on his own head the crown which he had filched from his master’s. So was it with the rest. The four great officers of the Court and Household in the oldest German kingdoms are the Chamberlain, the Marshal, the Steward and the Butler.