A royal servant (Hungarian: szerviens, Latin: serviens regis) was a freeman in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 13th century who owned possession and was subordinate only to the king.
Article 5: The heads of counties shall not make a judgement in the royal servants' possessions only if the case relates to money or tithe.
Although, "royal servants" who lived in some provinces of the Kingdom (e.g., the "royal servants" of Transylvania and in Slavonia) could not enjoy all the liberties confirmed by the Golden Bull, because they still were obliged to pay their special taxes, but by the second half of the 14th century, they also became an integrated part of the nobility.
Following the Golden Bull, a deed issued, in 1232, by the "royal servants" living in Zala county indicated a new step towards the formation of institutes of their self-government: in the deed, they judged the lawsuit of Bartholomew, Bishop of Veszprém, which proved that the counties, that had been formerly the basic units of royal administration, commenced to turn into an administrative unit governed by the developing nobility.
Following 1267, only the Hungarian word for the two or four members of the County Courts elected by the nobiles (i.e., szolgabíró that literally means "servants' judge") reserved the memory of the expression.