In this way came about the later and more general use of the word "palatine", its application as an adjective to persons entrusted with royal Holy Roman powers and privileges—and also to the states and people they ruled over.

In the empire, the term count palatine was also used to designate the officials who assisted the emperor in exercising the rights which were reserved for his personal consideration,[12] like granting arms.

[12] Next to the Dukes of Lotharingia, Bavaria, Swabia and Saxony, who had become dangerously powerful feudal princes, loyal supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor were installed as counts palatine.

The count palatine in Bavaria, an office held by the family of Wittelsbach, became duke of this land, the lower comital title being then merged into the higher ducal one.

[18] Benedict XIV (In Supremo Militantis Ecclesiæ, 1746) granted to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre the right to use the title of Count of the Sacred Palace of Lateran.

These were regional groupings of most (though not all) of the various states of the empire for the purposes of defense, imperial taxation, supervision of coining, peace-keeping functions, and public security.

The Rhenish Palatinate's union with Bavaria was finally dissolved following the reorganisation of German states during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II.

In the second half of the 17th century, the Palatinate had not yet fully recovered from the destructions of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), in which large parts of the region had lost more than two thirds of its population.

The specific background of the migration from the Palatinate, as documented in emigrants' petitions for departure registered in the southwest principalities, was impoverishment and lack of economic prospects.

During the so-called Kleinstaaterei ("small state") period when this emigration occurred, the Middle Rhine region was a patchwork of secular and ecclesiastical principalities, duchies and counties.

Parliament discovered in 1711 that several "agents" working on behalf of the Carolina province had promised the peasants around and South of Frankfurt free passage to the plantations.

This proved difficult, as the Poor Palatines were unlike previous migrant groups—skilled, middle-class, religious exiles such as the Huguenots or the Dutch in the 16th century—but rather were unskilled rural laborers, neither sufficiently educated nor healthy enough for most types of employment.

[30] The Tories and members of the High Church Party (those who sought greater religious uniformity), were dismayed by the numbers of Poor Palatines amassing in the fields of southeast London.

Defoe's Review, a tri-weekly journal dealing usually with economic matters, was for two months dedicated to denouncing opponents’ claims that the Palatines were disease-ridden, Catholic bandits who had arrived in England "to eat the Bread out of the Mouths of our People.

"[32] In addition to dispelling rumors and propounding the benefits of an increased population, Defoe advanced his own ideas of how the Poor Palatines should be "disposed".

The Palatines transported to New York in the summer of 1710 totaled about 2800 people in ten ships, the largest group of immigrants to enter British America before the American Revolution.

The experience with the Poor Palatines discredited the Whig philosophy of naturalization, and figured in political debates as an example of the pernicious effects of offering asylum to refugees.

William King, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, said, "I conceive their design 'tis but to eat and drink at Her Majesty's cost, live idle and complain against those that maintain them."

Today, names of Palatine origin, such as Sholdice, Switzer, Hick, Ruttle, Sparling, Tesky, Fitzell and Gleasure are dispersed throughout Ireland.

[39] Henry Z Jones, Jr. quotes an entry in a churchbook by the Pastor of Dreieichenhain that states a total of 15,313 Palatines left their villages in 1709 "for the so-called New America and, of course, Carolina".

[46] Naval stores which the British needed were hemp, tar and pitch, poor choices given the climate and the variety of pine trees in New York State.

[51] In 1723, under Governor Burnet, 100 heads of families from the work camps were settled on 100 acres (0.40 km2) each in the Burnetsfield Patent midway in the Mohawk River Valley, just west of Little Falls.

[52] In their turn, the British authorities believed that the Palatines would serve as a protective barrier, providing a reliable militia who would stop French and Indigenous raiders coming down from New France (modern Canada).

[54] The Haudenosauee taught the Palatines about the best places to gather wild edible nuts, together with roots and berries, and how to grow the "Three Sisters", as the Iroquois called their staple foods of beans, squash and corn.

[55] Preston wrote that the popular stereotype of United States frontier relations between white settler colonists and Native Americans as being from two racial worlds that hardly interacted did not apply to the Palatine-Iroquois relationship, writing that the Palatines lived between Iroquois settlements in Kanienkeh, and the two peoples "communicated, drank, worked, worshipped and traded together, negotiated over land use and borders, and conducted their diplomacy separate from the colonial governments".

[55] Likewise, many Iroquois sachems and clan mothers complained that their young people were too fond of drinking the beer brewed by the Palatines, charging that alcohol was a destructive force in their community.

[59] The Palatines sent messages via the Oneida to Quebec City to tell the governor-general of New France, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, of their wish to be neutral while at the same time trading with the French via Indian middlemen.

[62] On 12 November 1757, a raiding party of about 200 Mississauga and Canadian Iroquois warriors together with 65 Troupes de la Marine and Canadien militiamen fell on the settlement of German Flatts at about 3:00 am, burning the town down to the ground, killing about 40 Palatines while taking 150 back to New France.

[56] In a letter to Johnson, Canaghquiesa wrote "we have condoled with our Brethren the Germans on the loss of their Friends who have been lately killed and taken by the Enemy ... that Ceremony was over three days ago".

[65] The only existing Pennsylvania German newspaper, Hiwwe wie Driwwe, was founded in Germany in 1996 in the village of Ober-Olm, which is located close to Mainz, the state capital (and is published bi-annually as a cooperation project with Kutztown University).