"The Mayor of the Palace is met with in all the Frankish
kingdoms. … The mayors were at first merely the first
superintendents, the first administrators of the interior of
the palace of the king; the chiefs whom he put at the head of
his companions, of his leudes, still united around him. It was
their duty to maintain order among the king's men, to
administer justice, to look to all the affairs, to all the
wants, of that great domestic society. They were the men of
the king with the leudes; this was their first character,
their first state. Now for the second. After having exercised
the power of the king over his leudes, his mayors of the
palace usurped it to their own profit. The leudes, by grants
of public charges and fiefs, were not long before they became
great proprietors. This new situation was superior to that of
companions of the king; they detached themselves from him, and
united in order to defend their common interests. According as
their fortune dictated, the mayors of the palace sometimes
resisted them, more often united with them, and, at first
servants of the king, they at last became the chiefs of an
aristocracy, against whom royalty could do nothing. These are
the two principal phases of this institution: it gained more
extension and fixedness in Austrasia, in the family of the
Pepins, who possessed it almost a century and a half, than
anywhere else."
_F. Guizot,
History of Civilization,
volume 2 (France, volume 1), lecture 19._
ALSO IN:
_W. C. Perry,
The Franks,
chapter 5._
See, also,
FRANKS: A. D. 511-752.
MAYORUNA,
BARBUDO, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ANDESIANS.
MAYPO, Battle of (1818).
See CHILE: A. D. 1810-1818.