s if
cut from the same piece of cloth. A girdle or belt was worn at the
waist. When the men were hunting or working, they wore gown and
cloak of knee length. Men wore stockings to the knee and shoes.
The fashion of long hair on men returned.

The nation grew with the increase of population, the development
of towns, and the growing mechanization of craft industries. There
were watermills for crafts and for supplying and draining water in
all parts of the nation. In flat areas, slow rivers could be
supplemented by creating artificial waterfalls, for which water was
raised to the level of reservoirs. There were also some iron-
smelting furnaces. Coal mining underground began as a family
enterprise. Stone bridges over rivers could accommodate one person
traveling by foot or by horseback and were steep and narrow. The
wheelbarrow came into use to cart materials for building castles
and cathedrals.

Merchants, who had come from the low end of the knightly class or
high end of the villein class, settled around the open market
areas, where main roads joined. They had plots narrow in frontage
along the road and deep. Their shops faced the road, with living
space behind or above their stores. Town buildings were typically
part stone and part timber as a compromise between fire
precautions and expense.

Towns, as distinct from villages, had permanent markets. As towns
grew, they paid a fee to obtain a charter for self-government from
the king giving the town judicial and commercial freedom. They
were literate enough to do accounts. So they did their own
valuation of the sum due to the crown so as not to pay the sheriff
any more than that. These various rights were typically expanded
in future times, and the towns received authority to collect the
sum due to the crown rather than the sheriff. This they did by
obtaining a charter renting the town to the burghers at a fee farm
rent equal to the sum thus deducted from the amount due from the
county. Such a town was called a "borough" and its citizens or
landholding freemen "burgesses". To be free of something meant to
have exclusive rights and privileges with respect to it. Selling
wholesale could take place only in a borough. Burgesses were free
to marry. They were not subject to defense except of the borough.
They were exempt from attendance at county and hundred courts. The
king assessed a tallage [ad hoc tax] usually at ten per cent of
property or income. In the boroughs, m