The story of the Hansa is full of strange anomalies and antitheses. Historians differ by centuries as to the date at which the existence of the League commenced, and just as it never had a definite beginning, so it has never had a formal end, for to this day two of the Hanse towns--Hamburg and Bremen--have certain institutions in common, such as their supreme law courts and their diplomatic representation in Prussia. For hundreds of years the Confederation acted, and was treated by foreign Governments, as an independent State and a great Power, but its composition was never certain and always fluctuating. From first to last the names of no fewer than ninety cities and towns were entered upon its rolls, but it is impossible to say of each of them how often and when it joined or left the League. Foreign rulers, and especially the English monarchs, made repeated attempts to obtain from the Hansa an official list of its members, but compliance with their demands was systematically evaded on one pretext or another. The League's policy was, as far as possible, to assert the claims of its members, and to disown responsibility for those made against them. This policy is pretty clearly expressed in the following answer returned by the League in 1473 to complaints put forward on behalf of English merchantmen who had suffered through the depredations of the Dantzic privateer or pirate, Paul Beneke: "The towns of the Hansa are a corpus in the possession of the privileges they hold in any realms, lands, or lordships, and when their privileges are infringed, they are accustomed to meet and consult, and then to issue for all of them ordinances against all goods from the countries in which their privileges have been infringed, that they shall not be suffered in the commonalty of towns. But they were not making war against England; only some of the towns of the Hansa, which had been injured by England, had determined upon it at their own venture, win or lose, which did not take place in the name of the Hanse commonalty." The theory of the Federation was, in fact, that it existed for the purpose only of taking, and not of giving, and it refused to imply a corporate responsibility by publishing its membership rolls.