The Feudal system, which tended to break up all general authority, was gradually being subjected to the growing power of a central supreme ruler. Trade and commerce were reviving. The towns and corporations which had grown up under the fostering care of the monasteries, or under the shadow of the great castles of the nobility, were now assuming a more prominent and independent position. They perseveringly pressed their claims on their superiors, whether lay or ecclesiastical, and were by slow degrees obtaining charters and liberties. The Bishops whose sees were connected with the towns encouraged the citizens in this course, with the view of strengthening their own power and importance, so as to enable them to keep pace with and if possible overcome the great influence of their rivals the monasteries. This growth of the popular element in the towns naturally led to the employment of laymen in connection with the designing and execution of the works of the cathedral and other ecclesiastical edifices attached to the various sees. The monks, who had hitherto been the sole possessors of the requisite knowledge and practical skill, had by their schools, and by the guilds of tradesmen which they had encouraged, sown the seeds which were now springing up in a form they had not looked for, and producing a crop of lay artists, who were soon to leave their old masters behind. The monastic system of carrying on everything according to rule had long held architecture in bondage. Under the new impulse all conventional rules were abandoned, and the artists trusted to the inspiration of nature for their guidance. Hence it followed that whether in planning, in construction, or in ormamentation, the forms so long reverently followed by the architects of the monasteries, were speedily dropped by the lay artists of the towns, and a new art sprung up with the most marvellous rapidity. To the new school of artists nothing which would naturally and logically suit their requirements came amiss. The round arch was the traditional form of the ecclesiastics, but, the lay architects of the North finding (as the builders of the South had long previously done) that the pointed arch was more flexible and amenable to their requirements, forthwith adopted it. This enabled them to overcome what had hitherto been the great difficulty with the round arch, viz., to erect intersecting vaults over spaces of any form, whether square or oblong, and at the same time to keep the apex of all the vaults at any desired height. The transverse arches and the wall arches being thus pointed, soon led in the most natural manner to the window arches within the latter being also made of a pointed shape, so as to conform to the outline of the wall arch, and by an easy transition the pointed arch was soon adopted for all the wall openings as the most flexible, and most in accordance with the spirit of the new style.