They were allowed to sit in the houses of the Spanish provincial governors, and in any other places. They were not left to remain standing. It was not permitted for Spanish parish priests to treat these Filipino nobles with less consideration. The gobernadorcillos exercised the command of the towns. They were port captains in coastal towns. Their office corresponds to that of the alcaldes and municipal judges of the Iberian Peninsula. They performed at once the functions of judges and even of notaries with defined powers. They also had the rights and powers to elect assistants and several lieutenants and alguaciles, proportionate in number to the inhabitants of the town. By the end of the 16th century, any claim to Filipino royalty, nobility, or hidalguía had disappeared into a homogenized, hispanized and Christianized nobility – the principalía. This remnant of the pre-colonial royal and noble families continued to rule their traditional domain until the end of the Spanish regime. However, there were cases when succession in leadership was also done through election of new leaders (i.e., cabezas de barangay), especially in provinces near the central colonial government in Manila where the ancient ruling families lost their prestige and role. Perhaps proximity to the central power diminished their significance. However, in distant territories, where the central authority had less control and where order could be maintained without using coercive measures, hereditary succession was still enforced until Spain lost the archipelago to the Americans. These distant territories remained patriarchal societies, where people retained great respect for the principalía. The principalía was larger and more influential than the pre-conquest indigenous nobility. It helped create and perpetuate an oligarchic system in the Spanish colony for more than three hundred years.Cf. Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine Islands (1493–1898), Cleveland: The A.H. Clark Company, 1903, Vol. XVII, p. 331; Ibid., Vol. XL, p. 218. The Spanish colonial government's prohibition for foreigners to own land in the Philippines contributed to the evolution of this form of oligarchy. In some provinces of the Philippines, many Spaniards and foreign merchants intermarried with the rich and landed Austronesian local nobilities. From these unions, a new cultural group was formed, the mestizo class. Their descendants emerged later to become an influential part of the government, and the principalía. . Political functions Anthropologist Laura Lee Junker's comparative analysis of historical accounts from cultures throughout the archipelago, depicts Datus