ful
local lord, and exercising almost arbitrary power in the regulation
and the distribution of the public property of the commonwealth over
which he ruled; in fact, a descendant of the old _duces_ of the
Lombard barbarian host, who, perhaps, even antedating the royal
office, held their power and their position as princes and chosen
leaders of the people, rather than as appointees or dependents of any
higher authority. In the gastald, on the other hand, we have an
official of an entirely different type--one not belonging to a
powerful class of lords or leaders which traces its origin to the
spontaneous choice of the people or army, but one who gets his
appointment at the will and in the interests of the central
government, and is commissioned to exercise certain functions of the
administration as an assistant to, perhaps even as a check on, the
power of the local head.

Such an official was naturally located at the place where the district
courts held their sessions, and where the fiscal duties which he
especially had in charge were most easily executed. As we have seen in
the case of the _dux_, convenience points to the _urbs_ of each
_civitas_ as a natural centre, and consequently here again we find the
office of gastald as another agent in bringing the municipal division
into prominence; but doing this, we must always remember, simply from
the fact of convenience or fitness, and not in any sense as a matter
of constitutional necessity. Like that of the _dux_, the jurisdiction
of the gastald was exercised over the remotest farm of the _civitas_
as much as over the palace in the city: _de jure_, the city gained
nothing by the circumstance of its being the centre of the
administration of any office; but, _de facto_, the holding of such a
position can easily be seen to have been an important element in its
growth and development.

This fact is even of greater importance in the case of the gastald
than in that of the _dux_, because, on account of the elimination of
the character of local ruler, which was indissolubly attached to the
office of the latter, the gastald brought local affairs into direct
relation with other parts of the social system of the kingdom,
especially connecting them with the king or centre of the whole. Such
a connection, as may be inferred from what has just been said, while
legally true, of course, of the whole _civitas_, had practically the
effect of bringing the cities chiefly into relation wi