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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: or whence they came, or what lord, if any, claimed their allegiance, and they were all of them treated wherever they went as their own masters. The freedom which they enjoyed compelled association, for since they were no man's vassals no man was bound to protect them ; what rights and privileges they possessed were necessarily in their own keeping ; hence the great merchant guilds famous in the story of the Netherlands. Meeting together at night to discuss over their liquor their own personal transactions, the guild brethren soon began to consider the public affairs of the settlements in which they dwelt or which they frequented, and little by little to busy themselves with municipal administration, and presently they obtained the charters which gave them a legal standing. Nor were they without funds : their coffers were filled by self imposed rates, and by fines levied by their elected chiefs for infringements of their rules of association. The money thus raised served for the erection of guild halls and belfries, the building of town walls, the maintenance of waterways, and the making of roads and bridges. Another element was soon to be added to the population of these river side settlements of agriculturists and tradesmen : hard on the heels of the merchant came the manufacturer. Thanks to the greater security which the land at this time enjoyed and the consequent increase in the number of its inhabitants, the fens were being drained rapidly, and vast areas which had been lakes were already under pasture; this meant an increase of flocks, and a wool crop so abundant that the shepherds unaided were no longer able to convert the whole of it into cloth. Hence the professional weaver, and the new commercial activity made weaving a profitable profession. The men who adopted it an...
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