coffers were filled by self-imposed rates, and by fines levied by their elected chiefs for infringements of their rules of association. The money thus raised served for the erection of guild halls and belfries, the building of town walls, the maintenance of waterways, and the making of roads and bridges. Another element was soon to be added to the population of these river-side settlements of agriculturists and tradesmen: hard on the heels of the merchant came the manufacturer. Thanks to the greater security which the land at this time enjoyed and the consequent increase in the number of its inhabitants, the fens were being drained rapidly, and vast areas which had been lakes were already under pasture; this meant an increase of flocks, and a wool crop so abundant that the shepherds unaided were no longer able to convert the whole of it into cloth. Hence the professional weaver, and the new commercial activity made weaving a profitable profession. The men who adopted it--and their name was legion--naturally flocked to the towns, where, in touch with merchant and trader, they would be likely to find a more ready market for their wares. Like them, and from like motives, they found it expedient to band together, and soon the 'Draperie,' or Cloth Guild, became an institution of mark in the Netherlands. As for the original settlers--the serfs attached to the soil, the yeoman bound by less stringent ties to the Church or the chief under whose protection they dwelt, the _ministeriales_ who collected manorial fines and dues, administered justice in their lord's name, and managed generally his estate, and who were practically free men--living alongside of the new-comers, often united to them by marriage ties, they gradually adopted their manner of life, and themselves became merchants and manufacturers. For a time they seem to have been submitted to the old manorial _régime_, but they soon began to agitate for emancipation, and presently they obtained the parchments which gave them complete freedom. The making of the great commercial and manufacturing centres of mediæval Belgium was for the most part and generally speaking in this wise, but they did not all of them come into being at the same time--not even in the course of the same century. As a rule the towns of Brabant are less ancient than the towns of Flanders, and most of them owe their development less to the river than to the road. It was so with Brussels and Louvain, and, to a certain extent also with Mechlin. Off the main waterways, on the banks of tributary streams, navigable only by light craft, what business they at first did was more or less of a local character. It was not till the opening of the eleven hundreds, when the great high road was made from Bruges to Cologne, passing through Louvain and Brussels, and within easy reach of Mechlin, that these little towns at last became places of importance.