The new merchant, in contradistinction to the master craftsman working _en famille_ with his apprentices and assistants, now often stood entirely outside the processes of production, as speculator or middleman; and he, and still more the syndicate who fulfilled the like functions on a larger scale (especially with reference to foreign trade), came to be regarded as particularly obnoxious robbers, because interlopers to boot.

Unlike the knights, they were robbers with a new face.
The lawyers were detested for much the same reason (cf.

_German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp.

219-28).

The professional lawyer class, since its final differentiation from the clerk class in general, had made the Roman or civil law its speciality, and had done its utmost everywhere to establish the principles of the latter in place of the old feudal law of earlier mediaeval Europe.