Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/348

 336 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE municipal bodies were always anxious to acquire property, particularly forest land. Between 1463 and 1492 the municipality of Gorlitz bought up the landed property of a reduced noble family. The municipality of Grossglockau did the same with regard to several estates of nobles and the forests appertaining thereto. Through purchase, mortgage, and sometimes conquest, many towns became possessed of valuable landed estates. The landed property of Eothenburg, a little town in Franconia of only six thousand inhabitants, covered an area of more than six thousand square miles, with a population of about fifteen thousand. The landed estate of Ulm comprised not less than fifteen, and that of Nuremberg twenty, square miles. These city estates were generally managed by free farmers ; the number of manor tenants was relatively small. The cities themselves were not exclusively com- mercial centres : agricultural interests formed also a part of their riches. Like the confederate villages, they also had their communal districts of plain, pasture, and forest, the limits of which were marked by various signs, crosses, holy pictures, and trees, and an inspection of those boundaries took place yearly. 1 Every con- federated citizen of a commune had, over and above his own separate possessions, a share in the general privileges of forest, pasture, and fishing. In Frankfort- on-the-Main, besides this general pasture and forest privilege, each citizen had a right to let his stock in on the private fields which, according to a law of 1504, 1 See Maurer, Stadteverfassung, ii. 162, 171, 802-803, and iii. 181. In Westphalia we find several very elegant city houses (in Beckum for instance) still retaining the semi-rural surroundings of former times.