Merchants, who had come from the low end of the knightly class or high end of the villein class, settled around the open market areas, where main roads joined. They had plots narrow in frontage along the road and deep. Their shops faced the road, with living space behind or above their stores. Town buildings were typically part stone and part timber as a compromise between fire precautions and expense. Towns, as distinct from villages, had permanent markets. As towns grew, they paid a fee to obtain a charter for self-government from the King giving the town judicial and commercial freedom. These various rights were typically expanded in future times. Such a town was called a "borough" and its citizens or landholding freemen "burgesses". They were literate enough to do accounts. Selling wholesale could take place only in a borough. The King assessed a tallage [ad hoc tax] usually at ten per cent of property or income. Henry standardized the yard as the length of his own arm. London had at least twenty wards, each governed by its own alderman. Most of them were named after people. London was ruled by sixteen families linked by business and marriage ties. These businesses supplied luxury goods to the rich and included the goldsmiths [sold cups, dishes, girdles, mirrors, purses knives, and metal wine containers with handle and spout], vintners [wine merchants], mercers [sold textiles, haberdashery, combs, mirrors, knives, toys, spices, ointments, and drugs], drapers, and pepperers, which later merged with the spicerers to become the "grocers". These businesses had in common four fears: royal interference, foreign competition, displacement by new crafts, and violence by the poor and escaped villeins who found their way to the city. London in Middlesex county received this charter for self-government and freedom from the financial and judicial organization of the shire: "Henry, by the grace of God, King of England, to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, sheriffs and all his loyal subjects, both French and English, throughout the whole of England - greeting. 1. Be it known to you that I have granted Middlesex to my citizens of London to be held on lease by them and their heirs of me and my heirs for 300 pounds paid by tale [yearly], upon these terms: that the citizens themselves [may] appoint a sheriff, such as they desire, from among themselves, and a justiciar, such as they desire, from among themselves, to safeguard the pleas of my Crown [criminal cases] and to conduct such pleas. And there shall be no other justiciar over the men of London. 2. And the citizens shall not take part in any [civil] case whatsoever outside the City walls. 1) And they shall be exempt from the payment of scot and danegeld and the murder fine. 2) And none of them shall take part in trial by combat.