eye by veteran bureaucrats, who kept to the old customs of the land.

For his ministers, bureaucrats of an orderly frame of mind, devised for their own convenience rules and customs which became permanent, and could be cited against those later kings who interfered more actively in the details of domestic governance.

In 1139 Stephen had wrought himself fatal damage by quarrelling with the ecclesiastical bureaucrats, the kinsmen and allies of Roger of Salisbury, who had been among his earliest adherents.

In Sicily, which for centuries had enjoyed a feudal constitution modernized and Anglicized under British auspices in 1812, and where anti-Neapolitan feeling was strong, autonomy was suppressed, the constitution abolished in 1816, and the island, as a reward for its fidelity to the dynasty, converted into a Neapolitan province governed by Neapolitan bureaucrats.

On the other hand, the new grand-duke Louis, who had succeeded in 1818, was unpopular, and the administration was in the hands of hide-bound and inefficient bureaucrats.