Some of the cities of the Netherlands were subject to episcopal jurisdiction, and the bishops of Liege, Utrecht, and Tournay, are distinguished in the annals of the middle ages; but other cities were subject to the counts of the province in which they were situate. Yet, at an early period, the shrewd people of that commercial country banded together for mutual protection and assistance, under the forms of guilds, or fraternities, which prepared for the municipal corporations of later times: and, in the case of the Frisons, or people of Friesland, they secured for themselves very considerable rights in the ninth century. These rights consisted in the freedom of every order of citizens, the possession of property, the privilege of trial by their own judges, a narrow limitation of military service, and an hereditary title to feudal estates, in direct line, on payment of certain dues. These rights formed the Magna Charta of the Frieslanders, and gave them a proud distinction among their neighbours. With regard to the cities of France, Mr. Hallam remarks: "Every town, except within the royal domain, was subject to some lord. In episcopal cities, the bishop possessed a considerable authority, and in many there was a class of resident nobility. It is probable that the proportion of freemen was always greater than in the country; some sort of retail trade and even of manufacture, must have existed in the rudest of the middle ages; and, consequently, some little capital was required for their exercise. Nor is it so easy to oppress a collected body as the dispersed and dispirited cultivators of the soil: probably, therefore, the condition of the towns was, at all times, by far the more tolerable servitude, and they might enjoy several immunities by usage before the date of those charters which gave them sanction. In Provence, where the feudal star shone with a less powerful ray, the cities, though not independently governed, were more flourishing than the French. Marseilles, in the beginning of the twelfth age, was able to equip powerful navies, and to share in the wars of Genoa and Pisa against the Saracens of Sardinia."