Seigneurie (lordship) was a system of government in which the seigneur or lord, dominus in Latin, exercised for his own profit powers that were regalian in origin, that is, powers of a public character. The formation of lordships resulted in a parcelling-out of the kingdom which gave birth to great principalities, baronies or castellanies, those cells of local life generated by a castle. Besides these collective lordships, called 'communes', the lay and ecclesiastical principalities demand attention first. The ecclesiastical peers were always chosen from among the twenty-six prelates who owed direct allegiance to the king. They all held sees on a curving frontier which, north-east of Paris, separated the Capetian domain from Angevin Normandy, Flemish Amiénois and Vermandois, imperial Lorraine and Burgundy. The ecclesiastical lordships were gradually constructed on the basis of a vast temporal power in town and country by the extension of the privilege of immunity, to which were added economic concessions related to market and minting rights.