Such an union for securing internal peace, consisting as it did of the principal persons interested, easily went on to enact commercial regulations. These were, on the one hand, the reserving to its own body the privilege of purchasing the stock of the foreign merchant, and, on the other, restricting the right of selling within the town to its own members. Royal authorisation set the seal to this practice. When the kings began to give charters to the towns, the legal recognition of their Merchant Gild was one of the chief of the privileges desired by the townsmen. This restricted trading was not prejudicial to the town because practically all the burgesses were members of the Gild. If they all were not Gildsmen _before_ the royal authorisation they would be likely to become so afterwards. But all Gildsmen were not burgesses. The latter _must_ be residents: the former frequently included outsiders among their number. Nevertheless as the years went by, the Gild seemed to become the Communa, even as the Gild Hall became the Town Hall. Various reasons conduced to this. There were practically no burgesses extraneous to the Merchant Gild, though there were often Gildsmen who were not burgesses. The Merchant Gild was the only machinery for freeing the fugitive villain after a year and a day's residence in the town. It also afforded the best, and as a fact the only, centre round which the burgesses could rally in the defence of their old privileges or in the struggle for fresh ones. Its wealth and stability were also an additional inducement to the kings in granting to the towns their _firma burgi_. In theory the Gilda Mercatoria might be kept distinct from the Communa, but in practice the two bodies were found to be identical. But the later Communa did not take cognisance of trade affairs except indirectly through the Craft Gilds which the increasing complexity of trade was calling into being. Many of the members of these latter bodies were members of the Merchant Gild, and to them were added large numbers of the lesser craftsmen. The Craft Gilds specialized the work of the Merchant Gild, which gradually ceased to discharge any important office as a collective whole, though through the many branches into which it had ramified its influence continued to be of the greatest importance to the welfare of town and trade. NOTE 1. LIST OF MERCHANT GILDS. The following is an attempt to construct a table of grants of the Merchant Gild (down to 1485), in chronological order, and showing also, where possible, by whom the grant was made. Unfortunately the list is in several cases only approximately correct, as the document from which I have obtained my date shows that the Merchant Gild has evidently been granted at some previous time. In all cases however the earliest known mention of the Gild is given.