City Rights

Yesterday's post mentioned the town of Saint-Omer being granted city rights after becoming commercially powerful, but what did that mean? City rights were a status used in the Low Countries and the German nations attached to the Holy Roman Empire.

A town gained city rights as a reward for proving itself valuable enough to its liege lord that it was worth it to the lord to reward them with privileges that were not otherwise available to other municipalities. It could also be offered to a municipality in exchange for money when the lord was financially needy. It created better good will when the lord needed money than a surprise tax would.

The illustration shows the charter granting rights to the city of Flensburg in the extreme north of Germany. City rights could be a financial advantage, because it allowed the city to create revenue streams of its own such as:

• The rights to hold a market, which brought several sellers together on certain days, prompting buyers to congregate in the city. The city could charge the sellers a fee for being a part of the market.
• They might also be able to charge tolls on roads that pass through the town; there might be few roads in the area suitable for wagons, for instance. 
• The city could also charges its citizens for taxes.
• One large potential benefit as if they were granted a staple right; that is, the right to be the exclusive source in the art to produce and trade particular goods.
• They could also gain the right to build defensive walls, mint their own coinage, and the citizens could have a certain amount of freedom of mobility (the ability to move from job to job, for instance).
• Governance was a big issue. City Rights could grant the ability to create local government officials who could legislate locally and prosecute within their boundaries.

The first town to receive city rights was Huy in the province of Liège, Belgium. It, and some of its famous medieval residents, will be a discussed tomorrow.