The burdens which the peasants had to bear both in service and taxes, were not small, and greatest of all on the properties of the nobles; but there were many free villages in that country, and the government of the rulers was less strict than in Southern Franconia or in Hesse. Many ecclesiastical properties had been broken up; many domains, and not a few of the nobles' estates, were farmed by tenants; leases were a favourite method of raising the rent of the ground. All this was for the advantage of the peasant. The damage done by game indeed occasioned great suffering, and there still continued much of the old bond-service on the property of the impoverished nobles. But the greater part of the country people were pronounced by lawyers, newly educated in the Roman law, to be possessors of their property; it was the greatest blessing bestowed by Roman law on the Germans in the sixteenth century. It is an error to suppose that the bureaucratic rule is a production of modern days; it already prevailed in those times, and the villages had often to pay the small travelling expenses of the ducal messenger who brought them their letters. It was already decided by superintending officials how many fire buckets every one was to procure, and how many doves were to be kept; they saw to the clearing of the fruit trees from caterpillars, the cleansing of the ditches, and the annual planting of young trees. The parish accounts had for nearly a hundred years been kept in an orderly manner, and inspected by the government of the country, as also the district certificates and registers of birth. There was also a good deal of commercial intercourse. A large commercial road passed through Thuringia, in a line almost parallel with the mountains, from the Elbe to the Rhine and Maine; and from the descent of the mountains near to the Werra, lay the military road which united the north of Germany with the south. The traffic on these unconstructed roads demanded numerous relays of horses, and brought to the villages gain, and news from the distant world, and many opportunities of spending money.