CEREMONY IN GENERAL. 33 



the former. During early stages of social integration, local 

 rulers have their local courts with appropriate officers of 

 ceremony; but the process of consolidation and increasing 

 subordination to a central government, results in decreasing 

 dignity of the local rulers, and disappearance of the official 

 upholders of their dignity.. Among ourselves in past 

 times, &quot; dukes, marquises, and earls were allowed a herald 

 and a pursuivant; viscounts, and barons, and others not 

 ennobled, even knights bannerets, might retain one of the 

 latter; &quot; but as the regal power grew, &quot; the practice 

 gradually ceased: there were none so late as Elizabeth s 

 reign.&quot; Yet further, the structure carrying on 



ceremonial control slowly falls away, because its functions 

 are gradually encroached upon. Political and ecclesiasti 

 cal regulations, though at first insisting mainly on conduct 

 expressing obedience to rulers, human and divine, develop 

 more and more in the directions of equitable restraints on 

 conduct between individuals, and ethical precepts for the 

 guidance of such conduct; and in doing this they trench 

 more and more on the sphere of the ceremonial organiza 

 tion. In France, besides having the semi-priestly functions 

 we have noted, the heralds were &quot; judges of the crimes 

 committed by the nobility; &quot; and they were empowered to 

 degrade a transgressing noble, confiscate his goods, raze his 

 dwellings, lay waste his lands, and strip him of his arms. 

 In England, too, certain civil duties were discharged by 

 these officers of ceremony. Till 1G88, the provincial 

 kings-at-arms had &quot; visited their divisions, receiving com- 

 missions for that purpose from the Sovereign, by which 

 means the funeral certificates, the descents, and alliances of 

 the nobility and gentry, had been properly registered in this 

 college [of Heralds]. These became records in all the 

 courts at law.&quot; Evidently the assumption of functions of 

 these kinds by ecclesiastical and political agents, has joined 

 in reducing the ceremonial structures to those rudiments 

 which now remain in the almost-forgotten Herald s Col- 



