As urban centers grew during the High Middle Ages, merchants began to look for ways to guard their livelihoods against local churchmen and nobles. In many cities across Europe, they banded together to protect each other from mutual threats. The communes sought charters from kings or great nobles that would guarantee certain rights for their members. In the twelfth century, merchants from the French town of Laon formed a commune to prevent their bishop from taxing them unjustly. As you read the charter, ask yourself why a medieval king might choose to grant such protections. What did monarchs gain by forging alliances with urban commercial elites?

1. Let no one arrest any freeman or serf for any offense without due process of law.

2. But if any one do injury to a clerk, soldier, or merchant, native or foreign, provided he who does the injury belongs to the same city as the injured person, let him, summoned after the fourth day, come for justice before the mayor and [judges]. . . .

7. If a thief is arrested, let him be brought to him on whose land he has been arrested; but if justice is not done by the lord, let it be done by the [judges]. . . .

12. We entirely abolish mortmain.1 . . .

18. The customary tallages2 we have so reformed that every man owing such tallages, at the time when they are due, must pay four pence, and beyond that no more.

19. Let men of the peace not be compelled to resort to courts outside the city.

From Frederic Austin Ogg, A Source Book of Mediæval History (New York: American Book Company, 1908), pp. 327–328.