"Every Teutonic King or other leader was surrounded by a band
of chosen warriors, personally attached to him of their own
free choice [see COMITATUS]. … The followers served their
chief in peace and in war; they fought for him to the death,
and rescued or avenged his life with their own. In return,
they shared whatever gifts or honours the chief could
distribute among them; and in our tongue at least it was his
character of dispenser of gifts which gave the chief his
official title. He was the 'Hlaford,' the 'Loaf-giver,' a name
which, through a series of softenings and contractions, and
with a complete forgetfulness of its primitive meaning, has
settled down into the modern form of Lord."
_E. A. Freeman,
History Norman Conquests,
chapter 3, section 2 (volume 1)._