about usurpations, exactions, and acts of violence committed by the . In the Netherlands (as well as in Germany) were often appointed in the cities, by the overlord or by the emperor, to take the place of the bailiff (Dutch , German ) or to stand alongside this official in matters of law. In England In England, the word was never used to denote a hereditary representative of an abbot; but in some of the larger abbeys there were hereditary stewards whose functions and privileges were not dissimilar to those of the continental . Instead, the word , or more commonly avowee, was in constant use in England to denote the patron of an ecclesiastical benefice, whose sole right of any importance was a hereditary one of presenting a parson to the bishop for institution. In this way the hereditary right of presentation to a benefice came to be called in English an advowson (). Old Swiss Confederacy The title of appears in the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1415. A ruled a , either representing a sovereign canton, or acting on behalf of the Confederacy, or a subset thereof, administering a condominium () shared between several cantons. In the case of condominiums, the cantons took turns in appointing a for a period of two years. In exceptional cases, the population of the was allowed to elect their own . This concerned in particular, which was nominally a subject territory of Bern, but enjoyed a special status as a military ally. The office of was abolished in 1798, with the foundation of the Helvetic Republic. Habsburg Netherlands Although the title of Duke of Burgundy was extinguished by the French king after the annexation of its ancestral lands in 1477, the Habsburg kings of Spain and archdukes of Austria continued to use the title to refer to their realms in the Netherlands. The monarchs reigning in Madrid and Vienna controlled these through governors known variously as or . Parallels in medieval England and France The status of protective lordship, however, in relation to ecclesiastical estates as held, and notoriously abused, by the nobility in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, is without close parallel. There is no single equivalent in English history. The office of reeve was much the same at a village or peasant level, and in other contexts the roles of sheriff, bailiff, seneschal and castellan of course included similar elements.