Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers become the gossips of kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums and burn the royal notes of hand in fires of cinnamon wood.

Wealth brings strength, strength confidence.

Learning to handle cross-bow and dagger, the burghers fear less the baronial sword, finding that their own will cut as well, seeing that great armies--flowers of chivalry--can ride away before them fast enough at battles of spurs and other encounters.

Sudden riches beget insolence, tumults, civic broils.

Internecine quarrels, horrible tumults stain the streets with blood, but education lifts the citizens more and more out of the original slough.