Although the earliest beginnings of‘feudal’ society have been traced back to the late seventh-century collapse of the royal ability to pay for troops in Merovingian Frankia, the key period for its development is generally regarded as having begun a century and a half later. The essential element in this development was the breakdown of imperial authority, assisted by the pressure of Scandinavian attacks. Carolingian imperial or royal officers, primarily the counts, began to treat the counties with whose care they had been charged for a limited period of time, as territories over which they ruled by right, and which they could pass on to their sons. The devolution of authority can be traced further, as comital officers, such as castellans, in their turn gradually became hereditary holders of fiefs, rather than temporary holders of offices. Eventually, by the eleventh century, a hierarchy of authority evolved in which personal ties, the holding of land, and the exercise of regalian authority became inextricably mixed. The fragmentation of the control of the minting of coined money was naturally involved at this period among other aspects of the fragmentation of regalian authority. Charlemagne had quite clearly re-established minting as an undoubted exercise of regalian authority, and it was to be exercised through the counts. Around 820, Louis the Pious issued a capitulary on coinage on the explicit assumption that the care of his mints was already in the hands of his counts.