Sessions of the Estates were ruled by a procedure that was very different from that of modern parliaments. No votes were held on some proposal and there was no round of debates. The grand pensionary controlled the agenda. He introduced a subject and then invited the members to state their opinions, which was done in a fixed order, reflecting the dates the cities they represented had been given city rights. At the end, the grand pensionary summarised each of the statements of the delegates, with an implicit conclusion about what collective decision had been made by this. This way, if he was a competent man, he could control the entire decision-making process, especially as one of his duties was to represent the ten members of the nobility delegates—the —in their absence and phrase the single opinion they as a body had the right to express. The office existed because all delegates of the States were, although ranked according to ancient feudal hierarchy, still basically equal and none among them could thus act as a head.