who for their part looked to raise revenue from market tolls, or from the profits of their mints. The areas of dense population saw the most rapid development of towns and of the political importance of their inhabitants; when Count Charles of Flanders was murdered in 1127 the townsmen of Ghent and Bruges played a major part in the civil war which resulted, and in the resolution of the succession to Thierry of Alsace. Some twenty years before the inhabitants of Laon had themselves dramatically illustrated the emergence of townsfolk as a political force when they murdered their bishop after he had refused to grant them a commune, or rights of self-government, and about the same time the bishop of Compostella was experiencing revolt from the citizens of his much less-developed city. Faced with such pressures other lords compounded their rights into fixed dues and granted defined customs to their citizens, which could be an important factor in encouraging immigration to their towns. Once made grants were difficult to renegotiate, however, and this could put lords at a disadvantage in times of inflation.
During the twelfth century towns assumed further functions. Some, such as Paris, drew income from the students attracted to their schools. Others drew income from banking and mortgaging land, which could raise considerable sums when nobles were running into financial difficulties, or churches were caught midway in expensive building programmes. Jews, unencumbered by the Christian prohibition of usury, played a prominent part in these activities, and paid a heavy cost for it. They were liable to pogroms, such as those which swept the Rhineland cities in 1096, and to arbitrary levies by their lords; when the king of France arrested the Jews in the crown lands in 1180, he was able to ransom them for the considerable sum of 15,000 marks. Alongside banking there were larger-scale manufacture and long-distance trade. Here there were three principal exports: slaves, taken by the Germans on their eastern border or by the Vikings, and particularly in demand by the Muslim caliphate of Cordoba before its collapse in the early eleventh century; Flemish cloths and woollens, increasingly manufactured from English wool; silver, of which major
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