As elsewhere expenses were paid by fines and customs dues. These latter some cities tried to elude at various times in a spirit of egotistic and most short-sighted policy. Chief among these was Cologne which was in consequence "unhansed" for some time. Indeed Cologne was always a more or less turbulent member of the League. The official meetings of the Hanseatic representatives at Bruges curiously enough did not take place in their own factory, but were held in the Reventer, that is to say, the refectory of the Carmelite convent. Their charters were deposited in the church sacristy, or more precisely in the so-called Noah's ark, this alliance between sacred and profane things being a common feature of those times. As the might of the League increased at Bruges they insisted that every vessel sailing the seas must make an enforced halt at the port of Bruges, and thus give the traders a first chance of buying their wares or, in any case, of exacting from them a staple toll. Exception was made only in the case of ships sailing to England or to the Baltic seaboard. The possession of this privilege naturally proved a source of great wealth and power to the League, who grew proud and haughty as they increased in strength, and even ventured to oppose themselves to the Flemings, if they considered that these had in any way offended against "the majesty of the Hanseatic nation in the person of any of its members or officers." They would then threaten to transport their factory into some other city, and once actually carried out the threat. They suspended all trade with Flanders, blocked its ports, and refused to buy its goods. At the last the murmurs of the artizans thus thrown out of work, and the general distress among the people, forced the rulers to crave grace and to beg for the return of these masterful strangers, even according them new privileges, that is to say, new weapons of oppression. For the League, on these occasions of proud resentment, took the most menacing of tones and exacted a heavy satisfaction. Thus once, because one of its members had been, as it considered, gravely insulted, and others murdered, it demanded that a chapel should be built and masses founded to pray for the repose of the souls of those who had perished; and that a large indemnity should be paid to the relations of the dead and to the division of the League to which they belonged. And, further, in order to induce this division to return to Bruges, it was requisite that one hundred of the chief burghers should come in procession to the Carmelite convent and ask public pardon from the Hanseatics, and that sixteen of these should go in pilgrimage to Santiago de Compastello and four to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Only after such expiation would the division allow itself to be re-established.