W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

486 The Coins of Eiirope
seigniorial
caste classifiable under
two divisions, the secular
and the ecclesiastical, which may be again arranged under
two heads, the great and the minor feoffees. Of the relationship
of these bodies toward each other and toward the
Crown it does not belong to the immediate subject to speak
or treat beyond the result which accrued from such an infinite
partition of subsidiary political autonomy to the national
coinage.
The feudal money of France, subsequently to the reign
of Charles le Chauve, was perhaps advisedly very similar in
its general character to the regal series. The latter had at
that time assumed something approaching a distinct and
independent type, and had at all events renounced the
primitive and hybrid conceptions legible on the currencies of
the earlier races. It was not till a later epoch, when some
of the great vassals of the Crown attained wealth, and
aspired to vie with the sovereign in the splendour of their
display, that we meet with the more sumptuous numismatic
productions of feudal origin which, by their individuality of
character in portraiture and heraldry, betrayed the coexistence
of many masters on the same soil and the qualified
power of the reigning monarch.
The dismemberment of the Carlovingian empire shortly
after the decease of the founder brings more clearly into
view the wide prevalence of the claim to strike money and
the actual exercise of the right ;
but we should probably
have seen to a fuller extent that this state of things existed
long prior to the Prankish era, if the bulk of the Merovingian
money had not by its anonymous nature been so difficult
of assignment to the responsible issuers. The normal lists
of French rulers, even when they are most elaborate and complete,
inadequately convey the state of constitutional parties
in a country or region which was not merely parcelled out
into separate feudal governments almost absolutely independent,
but which included within its area an amount of
territory constantly -subject to change and redistribution.
While the boundaries of France periodically expanded or
receded, its divisions underwent perpetual
modification or