The officers and servants were remunerated in various ways. Sometimes they were allowed to share in the profits connected with their charges. The swine-herd of Glastonbury Abbey, for instance, received one sucking-pig a year, the interior parts of the best pig, and the tails of all the others which were slaughtered in the abbey[705]. The chief scullion (_scutellarius_) had a right to all remnants of viands,--but not of game,--to the feathers and the bowels of geese[706]. Again, all the household and workmen constantly employed had certain quantities of food, drink, and clothing assigned to them[707]. Of one of the Glastonbury clerks we hear that he received one portion (_liberacio_) as a monk and a second as a servant, and that by reason of this last he was bound to provide the monastery with a goldsmith[708]. Those of the foremen and labourers of estates who did not belong to the immediate following of the lord and did not live in his central court received a gratification of another kind. They were liberated from the labour and payments which they would have otherwise rendered from their tenements[709]. The performance of the specific duties of administration took the place of the ordinary rural work or rent, and in this way the service of the lord was feudalised on the same principle as the king's service--it was indissolubly connected with land-holding. [Importance of the 'ministeriality.'] In manorial extents we come constantly across such exempted tenements conceded without any rural obligations or with the reservation of a very small rent. It is important to notice, that such exemptions, though temporary and casual at first, were ultimately consolidated by custom and even confirmed by charters. A whole species of free tenements, and a numerous one, goes back to such privileges and exemptions granted to servants[710]. And so this class of people, in the formation of which unfree elements are so clearly apparent, became one of the sources in the development of free society. Such importance and success are to be explained, of course, by the influence of this class in the administration and economic management of the estates belonging to the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. It is very difficult at the present time to realise the responsibility and strength of this element. We live in a time of free contract, credit, highly mobilised currency, easy means of communication, and powerful political organisation. There is no necessity for creating a standing class of society for the purpose of mediating between lord and subject, between the military order and the industrial order. Every feature of the medieval system which tended to disconnect adjoining localities, to cut up the country into a series of isolated units, contributed at the same time to raise a class which acted as a kind of nervous system, connecting the different parts with a common centre and establishing rational intercourse and hierarchical relations.