It is scarcely to be wondered at that the rise of feudalism throughout Europe, during the thirteenth century, also had its effect upon the institutions of Norway. The ideas which Magnus embodied in his laws were, so to speak, in the air; and the commercial intercourse with England had familiarized the Norsemen with the titles and the pomp and circumstance of chivalry. Thus the Royal Council, consisting of the chancellor, the earls, and the liegemen, was obviously copied after the English institution of the same name, and, to make the resemblance complete, the ancient title of liegeman was abolished and that of baron substituted. The court officials were made knights and squires.[A] A privileged class was thus raised distinctly above the people; and the foundation laid for a hereditary nobility. A partial immunity from taxes was granted to barons and knights, and the lucrative offices in the gift of the crown were parcelled out among them. Though some elements of the ancient tribal aristocracy were absorbed in the new order, there was also a large element which owed its rise purely to royal favor. It is thus to be noted, that the new nobility of Norway was in the main a court nobility, which depended upon the crown for its dignity, and could not be expected, when occasion demanded, to antagonize the king in the interest of the people. It therefore shared the fate of royalty and lost its power when the royal house became extinct. For the later rulers, the Danish kings, were surrounded by a hungry aristocracy of their own, whose fortunes they were bound to push, and the Norse candidates for their favor had to be neglected. Thus it happened that the Norse aristocracy again returned to the people, from which it had originally risen. It was gradually absorbed by and identified with the peasantry, which thereby gained more than the nobles lost. "A compact class of allodial freeholders was formed, which, on account of their numbers and their remoteness from public affairs, may be styled a peasantry, but by reason of their liberty and self-assertion almost maintained the rank of a nobility."[B] [Footnote A: It is impossible to give an adequate translation of the word _herra_ in this connection. It is a lower title than baron and knight.] [Footnote B: J. Sars: Udsigt over Norge's Historie, ii., 399.] It is this proud peasant-nobility which until this day have constituted the strength of the Norse people and the bulwark of its re-arisen liberty. They have at all times, even during the darkest days of the union with Denmark, constituted a force with which the government had to reckon.