"Thither came for exchange," says the most modern and most enlightened historian of Flanders (Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, _Histoire de Flandre,_ t.

ii.
p.

300), "the produce of the North and the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages to Novogorod, and those brought over by the caravans from Samarcand and Bagdad, the pitch of Norway and the oils of Andalusia, the furs of Russia and the dates from the Atlas, the metals of Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada, the honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco, and the spice of Egypt; whereby, says an ancient manuscript, no land is to be compared in merchandise to the land of Flanders." At Ypres, the chief centre of cloth fabrics, the population increased so rapidly that, in 1247, the sheriffs prayed Pope Innocent IV.

to augment the number of parishes in their city, which contained, according to their account, about two hundred thousand persons.

So much prosperity made the Counts of Flanders very puissant lords.