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Owing to the differences in wealth, social status, andtraditions among the middling and lesser landownersholding service fiefs and between them and the aristocraticmagnates, the landed class in Muscovy was deeplydivided within itself, and its different groupings did notsucceed, as in Poland or medieval Aragon, in consolidatingany institutional bulwarks against the principle ofautocracy. There were three possible such bulwarks,the council of magnates, the assembly of the land, andthe code of precedence.The code of precedence was an elaborate, officiallyrecognized code, whereby appointments to the highercommands and offices were controlled by the relativepositions of the holders to each other as calculated bygenealogical tables and service precedents in the past.It applied only to the old princely families and certainothers, and it was the creation of custom and tradition,not of public law, so that the state only regulated, as faras it could, its application. It caused great difficulties,especially in military affairs (on occasion it had to becircumvented or even suspended), and it was not until1682 that it was solemnly abolished; but it was anineffectual check on the power of the tsar because itsprimary purpose was to protect the position of eachgreat family against the rival great families rather thanto protect their combined position against the tsar.The second possible check, the assembly of the land,failed to develop into a permanent institution, as hasbeen seen earlier (see pp. 80-83). The third check,the council of magnates, had a far longer history and wasof greater consequence.The council of magnates, accustomed to regard themselvesand be accepted as the hereditary ruling families,had been from of old the traditional body of counsellorsof the grand-princes. By the sixteenth century it wasalmost entirely composed of the princes, now subject toMoscow alone, and of certain other great landed families.Ivan the Terrible, after bitter experience in his minority(1533-47), saw the most serious obstacle to his ownpower in this aristocracy, which remained a powerfulforce even though its earlier semi-independence had99