FRENCH, FLEMISH, ENGLISH, GERMAN TOWNS 367 the Baltic region flowed to Flanders, whence they were exported to England and to the south and west. In commerce Bruges was the Venice of the north, resem- bling that city further in its numerous canals. One canal connected it with the sea, an arm of which was _ Bruges much nearer the town then than it is to-day. A writer of the early thirteenth century tells us that goods come to Bruges from Venice, China, the Cyclades, Hungary, Gascony, and England, and that there is room in its large quiet harbor at Damme for the entire French fleet. Bruges was e ventually to displace thejajxs _of_Ch ampagne a s the chief place of ex change_Jbetweeii_ the^ north and south of Europe . In 1297 the city limits had to be enlarged, and the new walls then built were four and a half miles in circum- ference. Bruges at that time had a population triple that of London. By this time, too, Bruges and Ghent boasted many houses built of stone, and their municipal governments ap- propriated money for paving the streets. The leading gild in Bruges was the Hanse of London, an organization whose members were very rich and who were engaged in the wool trade with England, whence Flanders now got most of the raw material for its cloth manufactures. If Bruges was three times greater than London, the latter city was nevertheless much larger than any other English town. The population of England, which to-day English about equals that of France, then was only a towns small fraction of the dense population between the Rhine the Rhone, and the Pyrenees. England was then primarih an agricultural country and towns were small. Eighty such boroughs or burgs — that is, fortified places containing dwelling-houses — are named in Domesday Book (1085), but of forty-two fairs and markets mentioned in the same record only eleven were held in boroughs. Many of the towns, however, early acquired the right to collect their own taxes and pay a lump sum to the royal officials, and in the course of time numerous privileges and charters were bestowed upon them by the English kings. By the thir- teenth century they had become centers of wealth and of
