It is plain from these principles, that this service on one hand, and this obligation to support on the other, could not have originally been hereditary, but must have been entirely in the free choice of the parties.
But it is impossible that such a polity could long have subsisted by election alone.

For, in the first place, that natural love which every man has to his own kindred would make the chief willing to perpetuate the power and dignity he acquired in his own blood,--and for that purpose, even during his own life, would raise his son, if grown up, or his collaterals, to such a rank as they should find it only necessary to continue their possession upon his death.

On the other hand, if a follower was cut off in war, or fell by natural course, leaving his offspring destitute, the lord could not so far forget the services of his vassal as not to continue his allowance to his children; and these again growing up, from reason and gratitude, could only take their knighthood at his hands from whom they had received their education; and thus, as it could seldom happen but that the bond, either on the side of the lord or dependant, was perpetuated, some families must have been distinguished by a long continuance of this relation, and have been therefore looked upon in an honorable light, from that only circumstance from whence honor was derived in the Northern world.

Thus nobility was seen in Germany; and in the earliest Anglo-Saxon times some families were distinguished by the title of Ethelings, or of noble descent.

But this nobility of birth was rather a qualification for the dignities of the state than an actual designation to them.