Though the patricians as a body were a wealthy class, all of them were not rich men; some, indeed, were so poor that they were glad to earn a livelihood by hiring themselves as servants to their more fortunate kinsmen; others, on account of their poverty, renounced their privileges, and sank back into the general body of the people. On the other hand, the wealth of the patricianate was being constantly augmented by the new men who found admission into its borders, and with the increasing prosperity of the town, their land was becoming daily more valuable for building purposes. Many of them were thus able to live in luxury on the rents produced by their property, others increased their revenue by farming the State taxes, others were engaged in banking operations, others again in commerce. In that case they became members of the Merchants' Guild, for the Guild, whose members were constantly being enrolled in the _lignages_ was always ready to open its doors to the son of the aristocratic house who wished to resume the calling by which, most likely, his ancestors had attained wealth. Thus it was growing daily more and more aristocratic, and at last nearly all its members were patricians by birth or by adoption. Embracing as it did at first traders of every kind, it now became an exceedingly close corporation, and only admitted to its membership the sellers of cloth and the sellers of wool, the cream of the commercial world. Such were the men who owned the soil of the cities of Brabant, who had endowed them, often at their own cost, with magnificent public buildings,[7] who had won for themselves free institutions, and who for the best part of two hundred years tyrannised over everyone else. [7] The old Cloth Hall of Louvain, for example. [Illustration: Cloth Hall Louvain]