Under such a system of arbitrary taxation, however, it was evident to the most selfish tyrant that the wealth of his burgesses was his wealth, and their prosperity his interest; much more were liberal and sagacious monarchs, like Henry II., inclined to encourage them by privileges. From the time of William Rufus there was no reign in which charters were not granted to different towns of exemption from tolls on rivers and at markets, those lighter manacles of feudal tyranny; or of commercial franchises; or of immunity from the ordinary jurisdictions; or, lastly, of internal self-regulation. Thus the original charter of Henry I. to the city of London[43] concedes to the citizens, in addition to valuable commercial and fiscal immunities, the right of choosing their own sheriff and justice, to the exclusion of every foreign jurisdiction.[44] These grants, however, were not in general so extensive till the reign of John.[45] Before that time the interior arrangement of towns had received a new organization. In the Saxon period we find voluntary associations, sometimes religious, sometimes secular; in some cases for mutual defence against injury, in others for mutual relief in poverty. These were called guilds, from the Saxon verb _gildan_, to pay or contribute, and exhibited the natural, if not the legal, character of corporations.[46] At the time of the Conquest, as has been mentioned above, such voluntary incorporations of the burgesses possessed in some towns either landed property of their own, or rights of superiority over that of others. An internal elective government seems to have been required for the administration of a common revenue, and of other business incident to their association.[47] They became more numerous and more peculiarly commercial after that era, as well from the increase of trade as through imitation of similar fraternities existing in many towns of France. The spirit of monopoly gave strength to those institutions, each class of traders forming itself into a body, in order to exclude competition. Thus were established the companies in corporate towns, that of the Weavers in London being perhaps the earliest;[48] and these were successively consolidated and sanctioned by charters from the crown. In towns not large enough to admit of distinct companies, one merchant guild comprehended the traders in general, or the chief of them; and this, from the reign of Henry II. downwards, became the subject of incorporating charters. The management of their internal concerns, previously to any incorporation, fell naturally enough into a sort of oligarchy, which the tenor of the charter generally preserved. Though the immunities might be very extensive, the powers were more or less restrained to a small number. Except in a few places, the right of choosing magistrates was first given by king John; and certainly must rather be ascribed to his poverty than to any enlarged policy, of which he was utterly incapable.[49]