r territory were often more voracious in their treatment of the
peasants than even the nobles themselves. The accounts of income and
expenditure were kept in the loosest manner, and embezzlement clumsily
concealed was the rule rather than the exception.

The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by the
wealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operated
through the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. It
had already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation of
the general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council
(_Grosser Rath_), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the
"honorables" from some of the public functions. Altogether the
patrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening of
the sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy and
unprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itself
into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorer
citizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. The latter
class was now becoming an important and turbulent factor in the life
of the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the body of
non-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by their
most wealthy section.

We may here observe that the development of the mediaeval township from
its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth
century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or
rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by
the circle of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within the
mark or district on which the town subsequently stood. These
constituted the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the
_Ehrbarkeit_ dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such as
Trier, Aachen, and others, the case was of course a little different.
There the origin of the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in the
leading families of the Roman provincials who were in occupation of
the town at the coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round
the original nucleus there gradually accreted from the earliest period
of the Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding districts,
fugitive serfs, and others who sought that protection and means of
livelihood in a community under the immediate domination of a powerful
lord, which they could not otherwise obtain when their native
village-community had