The renewed advance which the Germans made against the Slavs in the later eleventh and earlier twelfth centuries was due primarily to the energy of the able princes of Saxony and to the pressure for colonization, which increased in spite of small encouragement from any except the local authorities. The document given below is a typical charter of the period, authorizing the establishment of a colony of Germans eastward from Hamburg, on the border of Brandenburg. It was granted in 1106 by the bishop of Hamburg, who as lord of the region in which the proposed settlement was to be made exercised the right not merely of giving consent to the undertaking, but also of prescribing the terms and conditions by which the colonists were to be bound. As appears from the charter, the colony was expected to be a source of profit to the bishop; and indeed it was financial considerations on the part of lords, lay and spiritual, who had stretches of unoccupied land at their disposal, almost as much as regard for safety in numbers and the absolute dominance of Germanic peoples, that prompted these local magnates of eastern Germany so ardently to promote the work of colonization. Source--Text in Wilhelm Altmann and Ernst Bernheim, _Ausgewaehlte Urkunden zur Erlauterung der Verfassungsgeschichte Deutschlands im Mittelalter_ ["Select Documents Illustrative of the Constitutional History of Germany in the Middle Ages"], 3rd ed., Berlin, 1904, pp. 159-160. Translated in Thatcher and McNeal, _A Source Book for Mediaeval History_ (New York, 1905), pp. 572-573. =1.= In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. Frederick, by the grace of God bishop of Hamburg, to all the faithful in Christ, gives a perpetual benediction. We wish to make known to all the agreement which certain people living this side of the Rhine, who are called Hollanders,[487] have made with us. [Sidenote: The Hollanders ask land for a colony] =2.= These men came to us and earnestly begged us to grant them certain lands in our bishopric, which are uncultivated, swampy, and useless to our people. We have consulted our subjects about this and, feeling that this would be profitable to us and to our successors, have granted their request. =3.= The agreement was made that they should pay us every year one _denarius_ for every hide of land. We have thought it necessary to determine the dimensions of the hide, in order that no quarrel may thereafter arise about it. The hide shall be 720 royal rods long and thirty royal rods wide. We also grant them the streams which flow through this land.