Some small amount of manufacture and trade would necessarily arise in these infant communities, all of which doubtless had their weavers, smiths, and curriers, for the supply of garments and implements of husbandry to the rural labourers in the vicinity.[2] Germs of civic communities also appeared, in many instances, under the immediate shadow of the feudal castle. Groups of serfs who tilled the neighbouring fields, and some few artisans who manufactured necessary articles for the household, gathered round the baronial abode, and formed a little village, out of which, in process of time, there arose a town of some importance. In a similar way, villages sprang up in the vicinity of convents; and no doubt, as Guizot has remarked, the progress of towns was considerably promoted by the right of sanctuary in churches. "Even before the boroughs were constituted, and before their force and ramparts enabled them to hold out an asylum to the wretched population of the fields, the protection which could be found in the church alone was sufficient to attract a great many fugitives into the towns. They came to shelter themselves, either in the church itself, or around the church; and they were not confined to men of the inferior class--serfs and boors--but were frequently men of consideration and wealth who had been proscribed. The chronicles of the epoch are full of such examples. We see men, formerly powerful, pursued by a neighbour yet more powerful, or by the king himself, abandoning their domains, carrying off all their movables, and flying to a town to put themselves under the protection of a church. These men became burgesses, and such refugees were, in my opinion, of some influence on the progress of towns, as they brought into them both wealth and the elements of a population superior to the bulk of the former inhabitants. Besides, is it not probable that, when anything like a considerable association had been formed in any quarter, men would flock to it, not only on account of the greater security afforded by it, but also from the mere spirit of sociability which is so natural to them."[3] Thus these towns became places of refuge; characters of all sorts, good and bad, those who fled from the oppressor, and those who sought to escape the avenger, were gathered together; and thus the rise of modern towns resembled the rise of ancient ones, and many a European city had an origin like that of Rome. "Many fled thither from the countries round about; those who had shed blood, and fled from the vengeance of the avenger of blood--those who were driven out from their own homes by their enemies, and even men of low degree who had run away from their lords. Thus the city became full of people."[4] Such was the commencement of the proud patrician families of Rome, and in like manner originated many a wealthy and noble family of merchants in modern times.