A prodigious quantity of cloth and linen was manufactured in all parts of the Netherlands.
The maritime prosperity acquired an equal increase by the carrying trade, both in imports and exports.

Whole fleets of Dutch and Flemish merchant ships repaired regularly to the coasts of Spain and Languedoc.

Flanders was already become the great market for England and all the north of Europe.

The great increase of population forced all parts of the country into cultivation; so much so, that lands were in those times sold at a high price, which are to-day left waste from imputed sterility.
Legislation naturally followed the movements of those positive and material interests.

The earliest of the towns, after the invasion of the Normans, were in some degree but places of refuge.
It was soon however, established that the regular inhabitants of these bulwarks of the country should not be subjected to any servitude beyond their care and defence; but the citizen who might absent himself for a longer period than forty days was considered a deserter and deprived of his rights.