It would be easy to multiply examples of this type of
town, but we can only mention here a few whose history and customs are
particularly instructive. One of the oldest is St. Riquier in Ponthieu, a
notable instance of an industrial community dating from Carolingian times and fostered
by the policy of a great religious house. The second half of the eleventh
century is remarkable for the speculative acumen displayed by lay and secular lords
in fostering the development of new commercial centres; the Norman bourg
of Breteuil, founded in 1060 by a seneschal of William the Conqueror, deserves
special consideration as a model extensively imitated in England, Wales, and
Ireland; the Suabian towns of Allensbach and Radolfszell, chartered by the
great Abbey of Reichenau a few years later, are monuments of German seignorial enterprise.
Lorris en Gatinais, a town on the demesne of the French monarchy, received from
Louis VI a set of privileges which became the standard for the numerous villes
de bourgeoisie founded under the immediate sway of the Capetian dynasty.
But the charters thankfully accepted by new colonies or
embryonic market-centres were insufficient to satisfy the aspirations of older
and greater cities. At the very time when far-sighted seigneurs are scattering
commercial privileges broadcast, there begins among the urban classes of North
France, of Flanders, and of some Italian provinces, an agitation for more
extensive rights, for "free" municipal constitutions of our second
type. In these regions the popular cry is "Commune," novum ac
pessimum nomen; and it is blended with complaints of feudal tyranny, which
often develop, since the seigneur of the town is commonly a bishop or an abbot,
into complaints against the Church.
