not been enfeoffed directly by the king. In the end, for the Middle Ages, the formal grant of immediacy was of relative importance; the decisive factor was the capacity to assert and enforce one's claim to immediacy against competing claims.

The position of the princes with regard to the crown had strengthened progressively since the reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) who restricted the immediate crown vassalage to the archbishops, bishops and imperial abbots, roughly ninety of them,