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440 limited, while the ecclesiastics had the advantage of setting down their privileges in written documents. Their duties as well as their rights were on the same footing as those of secular feudatories.

The nobles, bishops and abbots could often interfere in lands which were exempt from aristocratic or ecclesiastical control. They were members of the Palatine Office (oficio palatino) as well as of the Royal Council and the other councils. They kept in their hands the government and administration of the districts, called commissa, mandationes, tenentiae, etc., and in their capacity of counts they were assisted by a vicar and the council of neighbours (conventus publicus vicinorum). Such powers intensified their turbulent spirit. They imposed their policy on the crown, interfered in the struggles for the succession, and consequently the monarchy found in them the strongest force in the country. But despite all this there was no feudal hierarchy as in France and Germany, since they exercised all their privileges by the favour of the king.

In Leon and Castile we can trace the rise of behetrías or collective benefices (benefactorías collectivas), "groups of free men who sought the protection of a powerful lord." If they might freely choose their own lord, they were known as behetrías de mar a mar, but if their choice were restricted to one family, they were called de linaje a linaje. They were never very vigorous, owing to their dependence, but in the tenth century they gave rise to the chartered town or concejo which comprised "the inhabitants who had been conquered by the king and were attached to the royal domain, as well those who had recently settled there and were exempt from the jurisdiction of the counts." The reason for the establishment of concejos was the necessity of populating the frontier. Since no one would live there owing to its insecurity, the king had to attract inhabitants for chartered towns by granting them privileges. Sometimes all who entered them were declared free men, even if they sprang from the lowest serfs; sometimes they were exempted from services and contributions; sometimes they were allowed some political independence and self-government; sometimes the existing practices and customary exceptions were recognised. These privileges were definitely set forth in the fuero or charter of the inhabitants (carta de poblacion); of those that have come down to us the charters of Burgos, Castrojeriz, etc., date from the tenth, and those of Nájera, Sepúlveda and Leon from the beginning of the eleventh century. As a rule the organisation of the chartered town depended on the formation of the concilium (concejo) or assembly of neighbours, which exercised judicial and administrative functions. The Council appointed every year a judge, several assessors, clerks of the market and inspectors, who were entirely dependent on its goodwill. Such were the beginnings of municipal life. Its growth was marked by the gradual absorption by the concilium of the powers and prerogatives, which had once belonged to the king and the count; but the king still kept the right to appoint judges who con-