intended for colonization, and then, armed with the terms of settlement, betook himself into the Low Countries and there organized a company of "homeseekers" whom he conducted into the new territory. His fee was commonly a preferred share in the enterprise in the form of an allotment of land. Naturally he often also became an important official in the new community and medium between the settlers and the reigning noble. The first mention of a locator occurs in the year 1149. But it is evident from the allusion that the office was already an established one. In fact, this sort of real estate agency became a profession. cities were established in the same manner.3

I

Even

There is much variation in detail in these settlements, but a striking general uniformity both in method of distribution of the allotments and in institutions. The model for almost all agreements seems to have been the charter of Archbishop Frederick of Bremen to the men of Utrecht whom he settled in the Weser marshes in 1108. Instead of the nucleated manorial village, with its peasant strips or plowlands in the spring and autumn “plantings” separated by dividing "balks" of turf, its demesne land, its group of huddled cottages in one corner of the manor, its array of irksome farm tasks and "boons," these colonial villages were laid out in rectangular blocks-an American would call them "sections" and "quarter-sections"-of 40, 60, 80, or more acres, so that each homesteader had a farm composed of contiguous land, and not, as under the manorial régime, an assembly of widely scattered holdings. We find these "manors of Dutch measurement" among both the Dutch and the Flemings and among new settlements of German colonists, who recognized the enormous advantage of the practice over the old system.4

'Meitzen, II, 348.

2 On the institution of the locator see my article in Proceedings of American Historical Association (1916), n. 81, and references there given. Kötzschke's Unternehmertum, etc., is the most recent study of it.

3 Poeschl, loc. cit., is full of evidence on this point. More briefly described in Heil, Deutsche Städte und Bürger im Mittelalter (Teubner's Sammlung, Band 43).

4 These 'mansus Hollanriensis dimensionis" are frequently mentioned in the charters, e.g., Kötzschke, Quellen, No. 19; Riedel, Der Mark Brandenburg, 51; Codex Diplom. I, 338. Elsewhere they are called "Flemish "-mansos ad mensuram

The village, instead of being a huddled group of cottages, was a long street, every house situated at the near end of the holding facing the road. Behind it lay the farm acres, the meadow, the wood lot, in this order if the "lay" of the land so permitted. Somewhere, usually near the center of the village, were the church and the priest's house, the priest, besides the local tithe, having a holding of his own (called "Goddes peece" in England) which was worked either by parish serfs or by the peasantry of the village. If there were several villages close together, a number of them collectively were formed into a parish. The priest's house and that of the locator were generally the most substantial and commodious structures in the community."

These Flemish and Dutch settlers brought their own house architecture with them in many cases. While doubtless the original "shack" might have been rudely built of logs, the permanent edifice was often of homemade brick made out of the local clay, with timber travesses and, of course, timbered superstructure. The floors too were brick; peat, with which the lowlander was familiar, but which the German peasant had no knowledge of, was burned in the fireplace. Sometimes the front of the house was decorated with rude and curious carvings, or painted pictures of horse heads, swans, windmills, etc. Of course these luxurious appointments obtained only among the more wellto-do settlers who possessed considerable land which was well diked and drained. Poorer settlers on small holdings frequently exposed to flood and freshet had no means to indulge in the blandishments of art.3

Flandrensium (Kötzschke, Quellen, No. 13C and 50C). They were also known as 'mansus regales" or "Königshufen" (Sommerfeld, Gesch. der Germanisierung des Herzogtums Pommern in Schmoller's Forschungen, XIII, Heft V, 140, 149). Cf. my article on "German East Colonization," op. cit., n. 76. Meitzen has an exhaustive monograph, Volkshufe und Königshufe (Festgabe f. G. Hanssen, 1889), 1-60, republished in Conrad's Handwörterbuch, IV, 496.

On these Flemish "street" villages see Blanchard, op. cit., 423-27, who gives some interesting maps. Cf. Meitzen, II, 47-53, 343-44; Inama-Sternegg, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgesch., I, 439-43. Cf. my article, cited just above, n. 77.

Lamprecht, III, 364-65.

3 Ibid.; Meitzen, II, 359-60, has a detailed account.

One of the primary inducements always offered to these settlers was exemption from the exasperating and multiple manorial obligations which burdened them in the homeland to such a degree that these grievances were a real cause of emigration. The sources abound with evidence on this point. Usually it was put negatively, that is to say, the charter clearly defined what should be the rights, duties, and obligations of both parties to the transaction, which, so to speak, became a written constitution for the government of the community. Sometimes, however, in order to make the colonists doubly assured, after reciting the duties and obligations the charter went on specifically to narrate from what the settlers should be exempt, so that their freedom was doubly defined.'

But in common with much that was new these settlers commingled some things that were old. They tenaciously clung to the preservation of their own native legal customs in the new land. The persistence of this characteristic trait of feudal particularism, which itself is traceable to the old Germanic legal theory of the personality of law, in spite of the fluxing of the old order of things and the development of so many new institutions, is a striking example of the conservatism of things of the law.3

The charters abound with record of this privilege. It appears in the charter of Archbishop Frederick of Bremen (1106), in the earliest instance of Dutch colonization, where their traditional judicia et placita are guaranteed;4 in that of Bishop Wichmann of Naumburg (1152) to the Hollander colony in Schul-Pforta;5 in that of Bishop Gerung of Meissen (1154), where the provision is

1 Item voluit idem archiepiscopus, quod omnes villici et cultores agrorum ejusdem ecclesiae liberi esse deberent ab omni censu civitatis vel villae et quod essent liberi ab omni advocatia," etc.-Henric. Wolteri, Chron. Brem. (ca. 1142), cited by InamaSternegg, II, 29, note. For other examples see Schulze, 157, n. 1.

2 Meitzen, II, 349.

Even the Stadtrecht of Goslar, 1256, although it was a mining-town where few lowlanders settled, shows traces of Flemish law, e.g., the "institutio que vulgar. Kura" points to the Keuren of Flanders. The town coinage of Jüterbock and Bitterfeld for many years showed the Flemish origin of the places (Schulze, 126-27, n. 2). The Belgian scholar Van Houtte has made a special study of the survival of Flemish law among these Flemish colonies in mediaeval Germany (Le Droit flamand et hollandais dans les chartes de colonisation en Allemagne au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle, Bruges, 1899). • Kötzschke, Quellen, No. 1. 5 Ibid., No. 9.

curiously worded: in placitis que cum ipsis et apud ipsos; in 1159 in that of Abbot Arnold of Ballenstedt (jure suo); in that of Wichmann of Magdeburg in 1166 (jure Hollandensium); in the swamp colony established by Archbishop Baldwin in 1170 between Brinkum and Mackenstedt;2 in the Kremper and Wilster marsh settlements.3

In the nature of things these imported judicial institutions were assimilated in course of time with those of the German population among whom these Dutch and Flemish incomers settled. But in some cases these special laws endured a long time. The Dutch colonies of Zarnekau and Gumale in Holstein preserved their "Hollensch Recht" and did not go over to "Holsten Recht" until 1438;4 Christian I of Denmark in 1470 canceled the Dutch law of the Hollander settlement around Breitenburg in the marshes of the Stör; the statutes of the Flemminger Societät in Bitterfeld were in vogue as late as the eighteenth century, and remains of them are still traceable in this locality."

It is a noteworthy fact that these Dutch and Flemish immigrants, especially the latter, were almost wholly a rural peasantry and not a townspeople, although the Flemish towns by the twelfth century were already well developed. The attractions of commerce and industry dissuaded this latter class from emigrating. In consequence the history of German town life in the Middle Ages shows little evidence of Flemish influence. Nor do Dutch or Flemings appear in the records as servile ministeriales and household servants. In the war of 1166 waged by Henry the Lion's rebellious vassals Count Christian of Amerland seized Bremen with a body of "Frisian" troops, but this is the only instance of the kind which I have met.

On the other hand, their effect upon the material development of the open country, especially bottom lands, was very great. While the Wends were traditionally a marsh folk, their crude

2

Kötzschke, Quellen, No. 10.

Ibid., Nos. 13A, 14; Vogel, iv.

3 Kötzschke, Quellen, No. 6.

4 Wendt, II, 16.

s Meitzen, II, 354.

❝ Schulze, 130.

7 Ibid., 130, n. 3. Guilds of Flemish weavers are traceable in Nordhausen, Langensalza, and Görlitz.

Helmold, I, chap. 103: Fresonum manu.

agriculture was incapable of the engineering necessary to drain the swamps. As for the German, he was a woodlander by ancestral association and by preference; even the Low German of the North German plain usually avoided the river bottoms, until the process of feudal inclosure of the Almend and the forests drove him to them.1

But the incoming Flemish and Dutch settlers had a natural aptitude for this kind of labor. They were used to bog and fen, to peat marshes and swamps, and by inclination preferred lowlands to uplands. The great landed proprietors of Germany who promoted their settlement had a clear perception of their economic worth; hence the large privileges accorded them. The charter of Bishop Gerung lauds the "strong men of Flanders" (strenuos viros ex Flandrensi) who will redeem the waste of swamps around Meissen. Besides ditching, diking, and draining these lowlander immigrants materially helped the country by building roads.2 Another service to which we find several allusions is the extermination of snakes by them.3

One might think that these humble laborers who settled where others would not go and hardly competed at all with the German would have been welcomed by him. But this was not the case. Helmold relates that the Holsteiners, not without reason, were suspected of firing, the villages of Flemish and Dutch settlers during the Wendish crusade "on account of hatred of these immigrants" (advenae), who were called "Rustri" in Holstein.5

'On this process of "inclosures" see Lamprecht, D.G., III, 53-58; von der Goltz, Landwirtschaft, 93-98; Roscher, Ackerbau, etc. (11th ed., 1885), secs. 79-80.

2 Kötzschke, Quellen, 11, note.

3 Ibid., Nos. 2 (p. 7), 4 (p. 11).

4 Helmold, I, chaps. 63-64.

5 The term first appears in Schol. 3 in Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, from whom Helmold, chap. i, 83, borrows it. See Pertz's edition of Adam of Bremen, the note to the schol. Helmold, I, chap. 64, quotes at length, the harangue of a German priest named Gerlach against the Flemings, in which he said: "Nulla gens detestabilior Fresis. Sane fetet eis odor noster." Every anthropologist and ethnologist knows the importance of this phenomenon among primitive peoples. So the children of Israel in Egypt complained to Moses and Aaron: "Ye have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh."-Exodus 5:21. Even to this day in Germany, from the Weser to the Oder, the terms Vlämsch, Vlämischer Kerl, Vlämisches Gesicht, etc., signify "uncouth," "heavy," "rough," "having bad taste."-Schulze, 130, n. 3, at end.