We may here observe that the development of the mediæval township from its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by the group of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within the mark or district on which the town subsequently stood. These constituted the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the _Ehrbarkeit_ dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such as Trier, Aachen, and others, the case was of course a little different. There the origin of the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in the leading families of the Roman provincials who were in occupation of the town at the coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round this nucleus there gradually accreted from the earliest period of the Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding districts, fugitive serfs, and others who sought that protection and means of livelihood in a community under the immediate domination of a powerful lord, which they could not otherwise obtain when their native village-community had perchance been raided by some marauding noble and his retainers. Circumstances, amongst others the fact that the community to which they attached themselves had already adopted commerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to the differentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, and thus to the establishment of craft-guilds.