68 ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN 
added to them with a burgermeister of the same 
class, making thirty; the old families sending fif- 
teen. The larger council was also composed of 
both classes, but with a great preponderance of 
the companies. 
I have hitherto described the changes which 
took place in the older cities, which derived 
their origin from the Roman time, and in which 
therefore it is at least conceivable that a tradi- 
tion of the Roman municipal constitution had 
been preserved. In the North of France and 
the Netherlands, however, a number of towns, 
which owed if not their existence, at least their 
importance, to the woollen manufacture which 
flourished here in the 11th century, when they 
first obtained a municipal constitution, either 
placed the artizans on a level with the old fami- 
lies or in the sole possession of power. The 
feebleness of the sovereign, in the last reigns 
of the Carlovingian and the first of the Capetian 
dynasty, the venality of the public officers and 
the rapacity of the nobles would have left the 
people without defence, had they not deter- 
mined to rely upon themselves. The kings were 
not long in perceiving that they could only hope 
to re-establish their own authority, on which the 
great vassals had so deeply encroached, by fos- 
