The home of the Karls was a long strip of territory stretching along the coast from the great Abbey of Muenickereede to the marshes of Wasconingawala in the county of Guines--a strip of territory of unequal width, of which the northern boundary would now be difficult to trace, but which certainly included within its borders the townships of Ardres, of Alveringhem and Furnes--the vast forest of Thorout, and all that district which was later on submitted to the jurisdiction of the Liberty of Bruges. This land was divided up into a number of districts called circles or guilds, which the inhabitants themselves administered by means of their own elected chiefs, who were at the same time their magistrates and their legislators. The ties which bound them to the sovereign were of the loosest nature, amounting to little more than this--personal service for the protection of the Fatherland, and the payment of a voluntary tribute which they themselves assessed. Certainly up to the end of the tenth century, and perhaps for a century later, the Karls were still a fierce, wild race, much given to hereditary feuds and private warfare, still infected with Pagan superstitions, and still occasionally practising Pagan rites. The vast majority of them were poor, but a certain number, especially after the triumph of Robert the Frisian, succeeded in amassing wealth, and of these not a few filled high positions alike in Church and State. Under the sovereignty of the early Flemish Counts the Karls had little to complain of, and though doubtless the feudal tendencies of their rulers were fostered by the _rapprochement_ with Normandy under Baldwin le Barbu and Baldwin of Lille, the Karls were still so independent of their princes, that whilst Baldwin, for a consideration, was helping William in his projects against England, the Karls were straining every nerve in behalf of their Saxon kinsmen on the other side of the water, and it was not till the regency of Richilde of Hainault, the widow of Baldwin the Good, that any systematic attempt was made to bring them under subjection.