364 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE had grown up irregularly. In these new settlements special privileges were offered to attract settlers. A good example is the charter of Beaumont in the Argonne, which was adopted by hundreds of other settlements. This place in 1 182 received from its lord permission to elect officials with powers of high justice. These officials were, however, to turn over to the lord a part of the fines and other proceeds of justice and to collect various other dues and taxes for him. These new towns were apt to be largely agricultural in their economic life, at least when first started, unless founded near harbors where fishing and trade would at once flourish. We read, however, in a poet of the time of a new city where eight hundred families came to live, of whom one hundred devoted themselves to commerce, one hundred to fishing, one hundred to various crafts. One hundred more were bakers, another hundred kept taverns, and the rest seem to have cultivated gardens and vineyards. In northern France the river Seine was an important artery of trade exploited by associations of boatmen and Commerce merchants at Rouen and Paris and on the upper of northern Seine in Burgundy, who at times came into con- flict over their respective shares in the river traffic. But the chief center of commerce in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was Champagne, with its famous fairs, where traders from the Mediterranean cities exchanged their wares with merchants from the north. These fairs were held in succession at different places and each lasted about six weeks. The two largest fairs were at Troyes, from which the expression "Troy weight" is perhaps derived, and at Provins, whose population has shrunk to-day to a tenth of what it was then. The sagacious Counts of Cham- pagne protected the visiting merchants, kept moderate the dues that were levied at the fairs, and strictly enforced all contracts and debts entered into there. The towns of Flanders and its adjoining districts engaged Flemish especially in cloth manufacture and in other textile industries. Arras, the capital of Artois, gave its name to tapestry hangings, famed in the Middle Ages
