other states, whether ecclesiastical or secular, belonged to the Council of Princes. Votes were held in right of the states, rather than personally. Consequently, an individual ruling several states held multiple votes; similarly, multiple individuals ruling parts of the same state shared a single vote. These rules were not formalized until 1582; before then, when multiple individuals inherited parts of the same state, they sometimes received a vote each. Votes were either individual or collective. Princes and senior clerics generally held individual votes (but such votes, as noted above, were sometimes shared). Prelates (abbots and priors) without individual votes were classified into two benches: the Bench of the Rhine and the Bench of Swabia. Each of these had a collective vote. Similarly, Counts were grouped into four comital benches with one collective vote each: the Upper Rhenish Bench of Wetterau, the Swabian Bench, the Franconian Bench and the Westphalian Bench. No elector ever held multiple electorates; nor were electorates ever divided between multiple heirs. Hence, in the Council of Electors, each individual held exactly one vote. However, Electors who ruled states in addition to their electorates also voted in the Council of Princes; similarly, princes who also ruled comital territories voted both individually and in the comital benches. In the Reichstag in 1792, for instance, the Elector of Brandenburg held eight individual votes in the Council of Princes and one vote in the Bench of Westphalia. Similarly, among ecclesiastics, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order held one individual vote in the Council of Princes and two in the Bench of the Rhine. Quaternions The so-called imperial quaternions (German: Quaternionen der Reichsverfassung "quaternions of the imperial constitution"; from Latin quaterniō "group of four soldiers") were a conventional representation of the Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire which first became current in the 15th century and was extremely popular during the 16th century. Apart from the highest tiers of the emperor, kings, prince-bishops and the prince electors, the estates are represented in groups of four. The number of quaternions was usually ten, in descending order of precedence Dukes (Duces), Margraves (Marchiones), Landgraves (Comites Provinciales), Burggraves (Comites Castrenses), Counts (Comites), Knights (Milites), Noblemen (Liberi), Cities (Metropoles), Villages (Villae) and Peasants (Rustici). The list could be shortened or expanded, by the mid-16th century to as many as 45. It is likely that this system was first introduced under Emperor Sigismund, who is