of jealousy and suspicion that he was ever afterward to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town, or by granting it to some other farmer.
The princes who lived upon the worst terms with their barons seem accordingly to have been the most liberal in grants of this kind to their burghs. King John of England, for example, appears to have been a most munificent benefactor to his towns.[1] Philip the First of France lost all authority over his barons. Toward the end of his reign, his son Lewis, known afterward by the name of Lewis the Fat, consulted, according to Father Daniel, with the bishops of the royal demesnes, concerning the most proper means of restraining the violence of the great lords. Their advice consisted of two different proposals. One was to erect a new order of Jurisdiction by establishing magistrates and a town council in every considerable town of his demesnes. The other was to form a new militia by making the inhabitants of those towns, under the command of their own magistrates, march out upon proper occasions to the assistance of the king. It is from this period, according to the French antiquarians, that we are to date the institution of the magistrates and councils of cities in France. It was during the unprosperous reigns of the princes of the House of Suabia that the greater part of the free towns of Germany received the first grants of their privileges, and that the famous Hanseatic League first became formidable.[2]
The militia of the cities seems, in those times, not to have been inferior to that of the country, and, as they could be more readily assembled upon any sudden occa-
