FRANCE: LORRIS, MONTAUBAN
The very extensive liberties granted by Louis VI to the episcopal cities of Picardy may be contrasted with what Carl Stephenson calls the "elementary liberties" granted by the same monarch to scores of towns situated on the royal demesne centered in the area of Paris and adjacent regions.
One such town, Lorris, near Orleans, received from Louis VI a famous grant which served as a model for many similar places. It fixed a maximum rent for house and land, eliminated taille and various other taxes, reduced military obligations to one day's service within the immediate vicinity, eliminated corvees except that men who owned horses and carts had to carry the king's wine once a year to Orleans, limited fines and punishments, and restricted tolls, customs, and other dues. It provided that any person who lived peaceably in the town for a year and a day was henceforth free and could not be claimed by a previous-368- master. Citizens could sell their possessions and go elsewhere. They could not be tried outside the town, and various rules of procedure were declared for trials within the town. There was to be no obligatory granting of credit, except that the king and queen were to be given two weeks' time to pay for their food.
Stephenson comments: "Lorris was a very small town, with distinctly second-rate liberties. It had no self-government; all political powers were reserved to the king and his ministers. And yet the privileged condition of its inhabitants was clearly marked... the man of Lorris... was economically and legally free. He was far removed from the arbitrary regime of domainal exploitation. His tenure and status were typically bourgeois... The normal holding was not a field but a building plot. The privileges of the residents were essentially such as were everywhere demanded as a minimum by commercial settlers.
It was for this reason that the customs of Lorris proved so remarkably popular during the ensuing centuries." 15If the liberties of Lorris were more "elementary" than those of Beauvais, it was undoubtedly because Lorris was on the royal demesne while Beauvais was on the lands of one of Louis'vassals. Not only kings but also dukes, counts, and other territorial rulers had strong incentives to encourage settlements in towns on their lands, to which artisans, craftsmen, and merchants would be attracted and from which money rents could be derived. At the same time, however, the territorial ruler was reluctant to give up his political control over the towns. The nature and extent of the liberties that were granted depended on a delicate balance of forces and interests. A good example is the charter of liberties granted in 1144 to Montauban, in southern France, by Count Alphonse of Toulouse. The count had offered, as a site for a new settlement, a section of his own land adjacent to the older town of Montauriol, which had experienced chronic trouble between the townsmen and the head of the abbey alongside whose walls Montauriol was built. Wishing to draw people from Montauriol, the count not only granted liberties similar to those previously given by Louis VI to Lorris, but in addition agreed to consult on various matters with "townsmen of the better sort." Probably it was with the help of such townsmen that the new town was organized and financed. By the end of the century Montauban was being administered by its own elected officials. 16