Industry was at a low ebb, violence was rife; plunder, disorder everywhere; too much the habit for baronial gentlemen to "live by the saddle," as they termed it, that is by highway robbery in modern phrase.
The Towns, harried and plundered to skin and bone, were glad to see a Statthalter, and did homage to him with all their heart.

But the Baronage or Squirearchy of the country were of another mind.

These, in the late anarchies, had set up for a kind of kings in their own right: they had their feuds; made war, made peace, levied tolls, transit-dues; lived much at their own discretion in these solitary countries;--rushing out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," any convoy of Lubeck or Hamburg merchant-goods, that had not contented them in passing.

What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when needful?
Arbitrary rule, on the part of these Noble Robber-Lords! And then much of the Crown-Domains had gone to the chief of them,--pawned (and the pawn-ticket lost, so to speak), or sold for what trifle of ready money was to be had, in Jobst and Company's time.

To these gentlemen, a Statthalter coming to inquire into matters was no welcome phenomenon.