Moreover there may have been then, as there frequently were in the twelfth century, a plurality of lords each having _ban_ or jurisdiction in particular localities[805], each having different customs to enforce, separate and conflicting interests to further, and a separate armament to dispose of. Often, as we pursue the history of mediæval cities, do we find king, count, and bishop, with perhaps one or more barons or castellans, claiming portions of the town as subject in totality or shares to their several jurisdictions, imposing heavy capitation-taxes on their own dependents, establishing hostile tolls or tariffs to the injury of internal traffic, warring with one another, from motives of pride or hate, ambition or avarice, and dragging their reluctant quotas of the city into internecine hostilities, ruinous to the interests of all. And then, if strong enough, among them all subsists a corporation of burgesses, perhaps a turbulent mob of handicrafts, distributed in gylds or mysteries, with their deacons, common-chests, banners, and barricades:—freer than the old serfs were, but unfree still as regards the corporation: for the full burgesses have made alliances with the nobles, have enrolled the nobles as burgesses in their _Hanse_, and have become themselves an aristocracy as compared with the democracy of the crafts. Or the corporation of freemen may have elected a noble _advocatus_, _Vogt_ or Patron, to be the constable of their castle, and to lead their militia against his brethren by birth and rivals in estate. Or they may have coalesced with the crafts in a bond of union for general liberation:—unhappily too rare a case, for even those old burgesses sometimes forgot their own origin, and blundered into the belief that liberty meant privilege[806]. ----- Footnote 805: _Banlieu_, banni leuca, or according to some etymologists, banni locus. Footnote 806: Slight as this sketch is, it may serve to throw some light upon the fortunes of the Flemish and Italian cities. Dönniges gives a most interesting and instructive account of Regensburg in very early times, with its three fortified quarters,—the Count’s (Palatium, Pfalz or Imperial _banlieu_), the Bishop’s, and the Burghers’ or Merchants’ quarter. Deut. Staatsr. p. 250, _seq._ -----