householder. All alienation of real estate must take place before the
Schepens. If an outsider has a complaint against a burgher, the Schepens
and Schout must arrange it. If either party refuses submission to them,
they must ring the town bell and summon an assembly of all the burghers
to compel him. Any one ringing the town bell, except by general consent,
and any one not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine. No
Middelburger can be arrested or held in durance within Flanders or
Holland, except for crime."

This document was signed, sealed, and sworn to by the two sovereigns in
the year 1217. It was the model upon which many other communities,
cradles of great cities, in Holland and Zeland, were afterwards created.

These charters are certainly not very extensive, even for the privileged
municipalities which obtained them, when viewed from an abstract stand-
point. They constituted, however, a very great advance from the stand-
point at which humanity actually found itself. They created, not for all
inhabitants, but for great numbers of them, the right, not to govern them
selves but to be governed by law: They furnished a local administration
of justice. They provided against arbitrary imprisonment. They set up
tribunals, where men of burgher class were to sit in judgment. They held
up a shield against arbitrary violence from above and sedition from
within. They encouraged peace-makers, punished peace-breakers. They
guarded the fundamental principle, 'ut sua tanerent', to the verge of
absurdity; forbidding a freeman, without a freehold, from testifying--
a capacity not denied even to a country slave. Certainly all this was
better than fist-law and courts manorial. For the commencement of the
thirteenth century, it was progress.

The Schout and Schepens, or chief magistrate and aldermen, were