ensive and defensive
compact (Fig. 204). A typical example of this last institution is that of
the commercial association of the _Hanseatic Towns_ of Germany, which were
grouped together to the number of eighty around their four capitals, viz.,
Lubeck, Cologne, Dantzic, and Brunswick.

[Illustration: Fig. 204.--Seal of the United Trades of Ghent (End of the
Fifteenth Century).]

Although, as we have already seen, previous to the thirteenth century many
of the corporations of artisans had been authorised by several of the
kings of France to make special laws whereby they might govern themselves,
it was really only from the reign of St. Louis that the first general
measures of administration and police relating to these communities can be
dated. The King appointed Etienne Boileau, a rich bourgeois, provost of
the capital in 1261, to set to work to establish order, wise
administration, and "good faith" in the commerce of Paris. To this end he
ascertained from the verbal testimony of the senior members of each
corporation the customs and usages of the various crafts, which for the
most part up to that time had not been committed to writing. He arranged
and probably amended them in many ways, and thus composed the famous "Book
of Trades," which, as M. Depping, the able editor of this valuable
compilation, first published in 1837, says, "has the advantage of being to
a great extent the genuine production of the corporations themselves, and
not a list of rules established and framed by the municipal or judicial
authorities." From that time corporations gradually introduced themselves
into the order of society. The royal decrees in their favour were
multiplied, and the regulations with regard to mechanical trades daily
improved, not only in Paris and in the provinces, and also abroad, both in
the south and in the north of Europe, especially in Italy, Germany,
England, and the Low Countries (Figs. 205 to 213).

Etienne Boileau's "Book of Trades" contained the rules of one hundred
different trade associations. It must be observed, however, that several
of the most important trades, such as the butchers, tanners, glaziers,
&c., were omitted, either because they neglected to be registered at the
Chatelet, where the inquiry superintended by Boileau was made, or because
some private interest induced them to keep aloof from this registration,
which probably imposed some sort of fine and a tax upon them. In the
following century the