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But that which seems to some to be more difficultly to be answered, is, when one Prince holds his Dominion from another, as being Lord of the Fief; which yet may be sufficiently answered by what hath been said before. For in this Contract (which is peculiar to the German Nation, and no where found but where they have planted themselves) two things are especially to be observed. 1. The personal Ob∣ligation.
2. The Right in the Thing so held. The Personal Obligation is the same, whether a man possesseth the very Right of Soveraignty, or any thing else though lying elsewhere, by vertue of the Fief: but such an Obligation as it takes not from a private man the right of Personal Liberty; so neither doth it diminish any thing in a King or State of the Soveraignty, which is Civil Liberty; which is easily to be understood by those Lands which are called Free-holds, which consist in Personal Obligations only, but gives no right in the thing so held: for these are no other than a species of that unequal League whereof we have discoursed before, wherein the one promiseth Fealty, and the other safeguard or protection. But admit they do swear Faith and Allegiance against all men, yet would this de∣tract nothing from the Right of Soveraignty over their own Subjects. Not at all in this place to mention, that there are ever reserved in these Oaths, a tacite Condition that the War be just, whereof we shall treat elsewhere. But as to the Right in the thihg so held, it may be such, that the very Right of Governing, if held in the right of the Fief or Fee, may be lost, and so return unto him that gave it; as well in case the Family be extinct, as also for some notorious crimes; and yet notwithstanding in the mean time, it ceaseth not to be the Supreme Power: For as I said before the thing it self is one thing, and the manner of holding it is another. And by this Right I find many Kings constituted by the Romans, so that the Royal Family failing, the Empire did escheat unto themselves, as Strabo observes of Paphligonia and some others.
Lib. 12.