Markgrave

Surely I did not know that they were the Markgraves kinsemen, and they have yet bene but verie small time with me, but since it so pleaseth him, I am content to graunt them libertie, and I will send them out unto you presently to go where it liketh him.

The ſame Evening, his Grace ſupped with the King, the Prince Royal, and the Markgraves, and din’d with them, the next Day, at the great Chamberlain’s.

There was Haghen of Tronek, and Dankwart, Haghen’s brother, / (For swiftness was he famed,) with heroes many other; / Ortwin of Metz, with Eckewart and Gherè, two markgraves they; / And Folker of Alsàce; no braver was in his day.

The last dying without issue, his share fell to his brother Frederic of Ansbach, who was the founder of the elder line of the markgraves of Brandenburg, in Franconia.

On the extinction of the male line of the markgraves, part of the territory passed to the Dukes of Austria, in the 13th c., and the remainder was acquired by them in the 14th, since which time it has remained in the possession of Austria.

Then, when the German kings, beginning with Otto the Great in the middle of the tenth century, succeeded to the crown of the Lombard kingdom and the imperial title and renewed the compact with the Church, Tuscany formed an exception to their general policy, which was to weaken the markgraves and the more powerful counts, partly by strengthening the Church by benefices and exemption of their lands from the jurisdiction of the counts and marquises, partly by strengthening the lesser nobles against the greater, e.g. making the position of the lesser hereditary, and thus moving towards feudalism.