The municipal institution of the Roman Empire survived, in many places, the downfall of Rome. Towns whose comparatively free institutions tower above the barbarism of the inroads of Hun, Goth, Frank, and Saxon, still exist, whose rights of local self-government are in succession from the Roman period, though these rights are constantly guaranteed by the grant of fresh charters. These towns were specially numerous in the South of France. They existed in Italy, so long a battlefield for rival invaders. They continued on the banks of the Rhine. Such places as Marseilles and Nismes in France, Milan and Pisa in Italy, Coblentz, Bonn, and Cologne on the Rhine, to quote a few instances out of many, never seem to have lost their local liberties entirely. The life of these liberties may have been feeble, and to all appearance, frail, but it was never extinct. Among the towns of Roman Britain, some survived the dark ages of the Saxon conquest. London is plainly one of these. So are probably York in the north, and Exeter in the west.
The modern towns of the Netherlands cannot be traced back to the Roman Empire. The Belgians and Batavians were not colonized as the greater part of the empire was. Hence the rise of the chartered town was later in the Netherlands than it was in the rest of Western Europe, though when it became a municipality the growth of its opulence was rapid.
The period of the Crusades, in which the Flemish counts took a notable part, was the beginning of a new epoch. The tide of human emigration flowed back for a time from the west to the east, not in the permanent form of a race settlement, but in the transient one of armed hosts seeking one spot by land or sea. The Crusades gave an enormous impulse to trade, and enriched the commercial cities of Italy, such as Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence. They elevated the condition of those who survived and returned, for a Crusader gained substantial benefits by his venture. They elevated the condition of those who remained, for the funds needed in order to carry on the expedition were supplied in exchange for local liberties and the right of trade associations. Besides, the exodus left higher wages, higher profits, and more secure institutions for those who laboured at home. The nobles began to see that voluntary grants, and the regular payment of dues from prosperous towns were a more certain source of income than the plunder of impoverished peasants and burghers, and the rapine of what was left to the miserable. Commercial prosperity constantly appears to accompany war, though re-action is sure to supervene. But the liberties which were purchased by solid gold and silver could not easily be purloined. Besides, the immediate return to violence was not safe or politic. The nobles soon saw that the improvement of their own fortunes and prospects depended on the opulence of the towns which were under their sway.
The form of these early charters is generally the same. The municipal authorities guarantee the fixed dues which they acknowledge themselves indebted in to their lord. In other words, he enters into the enjoyment of a fixed rent charge, secured on the revenues of the city and the goods of the citizens. The lord gives them the right of being tried by their own magistrates; in other words, of regaining a custom which was traditional among all Germanic tribes. These magistrates, mayors, and aldermen in England, Echevins or Schepens, in the Netherlands, were at first nominated by the overlord, and for long periods, but were soon elected by the citizens. As was customary, almost universal, offences were expiated by fines, which went to the count or the town exchequer, or even to the local judges, The municipality, in short, was constructed on the model of a manor, wherever in the manor the traditional customs of the people were respected and preserved. Only the strength of the town gave a more enduring guarantee to the grant of local liberties. It was a peculiarity in these towns that the inhabitants were free men. In England residence for a year and a day in a chartered town barred for ever all rights of a lord over his serf.
In order to prevent these towns from becoming a mere asylum for runaway serfs, vagabonds, outlaws, and the like, the institution of guilds or trading companies was essential to municipal liberties and contemporaneous with them. Every freeman had to be enrolled in a guild. Generally the entrance to this guild was obtained by a seven years’ apprenticeship, during which the aspirant to municipal rights underwent a qualified servitude. In most towns, membership in a guild became an hereditary right, descending from father to son. As the town became more opulent, the rights of a freeman were obtained by purchase. In course of time the lesser nobles sought admission into these trading companies, and, at last, even some of the greater nobles. The deans and masters of these guilds eventually monopolized the municipal government, and extinguished the ancient right of free election. It might well be asserted, however, that the process was really elective, more certain to select the most competent men, and more safe than a popular, perhaps tumultuous, election.
Still these Netherland towns might have remained small and struggling municipalities, but for the fortunate concurrence of several facts which, taken together, raised them rapidly to opulence. They became almost suddenly the traders and manufacturers of Northern Europe.
1. The Crusades had developed an extraordinary military activity in Western Europe, had generally suspended war at home, and had greatly stimulated commerce. The spirit of the Crusaders died out, the wars of Europe recommenced, but commercial activity survived. The spices and other goods of the East, sometimes conveyed by overland caravans and through towns, then flourishing, but afterwards destroyed by hordes of barbarians from Central and far Eastern Asia—sometimes by the Red Sea and Egypt—were collected at Venice and Genoa, and thence transmitted to Europe. These goods went over the passes of the Alps to the Rhine, and thence were conveyed down the river way, chiefly to Bruges, the city of the Bridges. It was but a slender rivulet of trade compared with the volume which the Dutch Republic carried, but it was singularly fertilizing. During its continuance, however, Bruges was in the first rank of commercial towns.
2. At an early date, and after the pacification of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, a century or so after these countries had ceased to swarm with the pirates who desolated the shores of Northern Europe and even penetrated into the Mediterranean, a number of towns on the coast of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Baltic, associated themselves together for trading purposes and mutual defence under the name of the Hanseatic League. The centre of this league is said to have been Bergen on the coast of Norway; the treasury of the traders to have been Wisby in the island of Gothland. The rapidity with which this league grew and flourished, the favour which it received from princes and prelates, are evidence of the value and volume of the merchandise in which they trafficked, and the magnitude of the markets which they visited. Their factories were planted in or gave occasion to the numerous free towns on the coast of Northern Europe; into the association with which European capitals and cities on the seaboard were glad to be introduced. The trade of the Hanseatic League was specially in raw materials, and the Netherland towns were eager customers for these materials. Hemp and flax, fur and hides, were regularly transmitted to these towns, and formed the means by which the Flemish burghers monopolized the industry of Western Europe and accumulated their wealth.
3. Perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of the Netherlands at this early period was that it became in one town or another the sole market for English wool, and England in the early ages of Flemish industry was the only country from which this indispensable article could be supplied, at least in any quantity, and the only country also from which it was supplied of good quality. The fact is, England was well-nigh the only European country where the peace was kept, where robbery and violence, such as ran riot in most European countries, owing to the insubordination and ferocity of the nobles, were repressed, and the law by which the farmer’s stock was protected was universally obeyed. The writer has read many thousands of farm accounts in the period to which he is referring, and it is rare indeed, in the elaborate and exact enumeration of all farm stock and produce from year to year, that complaint is made of losses by theft or violence. It was not so with the rest of Europe. What was a safe agricultural pursuit in England, was so dangerous and risky on the Continent, that the calling of the shepherd and the rearing of sheep were always rare and often unknown.
Not only was this the case, but the varieties of English wool in quality and therefore in value were numerous. The brands of wool, as merchants would say, were as many, as important, and as variable in value, as the qualities of wine are at the present time. Now it is true that there were woollen manufactures in England, perhaps sufficient to supply the ordinary wants of most Englishmen, but the skill of the English weaver was far below that of the Flemish. The finest cloths were woven in Flanders, and were thence distributed over Europe.
Friendship with England, therefore, and the uninterrupted import of this prime staple were of the greatest importance to the Flemish towns, and it was the object of the Counts of Flanders to court the good-will of the English sovereigns and people. From the time of the Edwards (1272) to the end of the time of the Tudors (1603) free intercourse with the Low Countries was of profound interest to England and the Netherlands. If this trade were interrupted, thousands of looms would lie idle, and poverty would show itself in the Flemish cities. If it were restored, the same looms would anew become busy, and wealth would be rapidly accumulated.
It was not, however, in woollen goods only that the Low Countries were superior to the rest of Europe. They had a similar reputation in the manufacture of linen cloth. Some of the names of the various kinds of cloth are taken from the country, or from places in the country. Thus serviceable linen for clothing and for table use went by the generic name of Holland. Diaper was the special product of the town of D’ypres. Linen is described as coming from Brabant and Brussels as well as from other places, and all these articles are high-priced. It is true that sometimes Netherlanders moved over to the eastern counties of England, bringing with them their skill and their looms, but this occurred rarely and fitfully. It was not till the war of independence and the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition fully set in, that the Flemish weavers migrated in thousands to England and carried with them the skill, which rapidly gave England the supremacy in textile manufacture which she still enjoys. The wealth of these burghers was the strength and wealth of their counts, and many a European sovereign was far less securely opulent than these many potentates were who occupied a country which was collectively smaller than any European kingdom.
The dukes and counts of the Netherlands were not slow to discern that the prosperity of their subjects was a matter of profound interest to the nobles, and that the concession of privileges would be a plentiful source of riches and strength to themselves. The communities became practically little republics. In course of time, the towns took common counsel together in assemblies which assisted in the general government. The deputies of the town met the nobles in the gatherings of the provincial estates. What became an early practice in Flanders, was soon adopted in Holland, and the Netherlands became gradually familiar with parliamentary action. But singularly enough, the clergy in the Netherlands did not become one of the estates. The Netherlanders did not from the beginning care to intrust their liberties to the Church. They were devout enough. They built magnificent churches, and decorated them lavishly. Long before any pictorial art was known in England the Netherlands had their schools of painting, even as early, it seems, as Italy had.
It is true that these cities were quarrelsome and combative. Pent up in these hives of industry and concentrated on their homes, they sometimes justified, by their riotous violence, the interference of their overlords, and the curtailment of their liberties. The ringing of the town bell was the signal of a disturbance—perhaps the occasion of it. But the burghers of Ghent were as proud of Roland, their town bell, as they were of their children. And after all, occasional turbulence was ill exchanged for the despair and misery which despotism at last brought upon this thriving country, when in the end the whole of it fell into the hands of the house of Burgundy, and thence to those of Austrian Spain.