The _libertini_ had to fulfil kindred functions in the ancient world, but their importance was hardly so great as that of medieval sergeants or _ministeriales_. We may get some notion of what that position was by looking at the personal influence and endowments of the chief servants in a great household of the thirteenth century. The first cook and the gatekeeper of a celebrated abbey were real magnates who held their offices by hereditary succession, and were enfeoffed with considerable estates[711]. In Glastonbury five cooks shared in the kitchen-fee[712]. The head of the cellar, the gatekeeper, and the chief shepherd enter into agreements in regard to extensive plots of land[713]. They appear as entirely free to dispose of such property, and at every step we find in the cartularies of Glastonbury Abbey proofs of the existence of a numerous and powerful 'sergeant' class. John of Norwood, Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, had to resort to a regular _coup d'état_ in order to displace the privileged families which had got hold of the offices and treated them as hereditary property[714]. In fact the great 'sergeants' ended by hampering their lords more than serving them. And the same fact of the rise of a 'ministerial' class may be noticed on every single estate, although it is not so prominent there as in the great centres of feudal life. The whole arrangement was broken by the substitution of the 'cash nexus' for more ancient kinds of economic relationship, and by the spread of free agreements: it is not difficult to see that both these facts acted strongly in favour of driving out hereditary and customary obligations. [Free tenants in the manor.]