It was no mean advantage to be a burgher in those days, when nearly all material benefits and legal aids and political rights were reserved for the favoured classes, and when it was the towns that opened for the working man and the shopkeeper a way to take their place too among the people of privilege. The burghers, of course, shared alike in rights of common and of pasturage on the town lands, of fishing in the town waters,[336] of the ferry across the stream or sea channel, and so forth; but their pre-eminent privilege was the right to trade. If ordinary inhabitants were allowed to buy and sell food or the bare necessaries of life, all profitable business was reserved as the monopoly of the full citizen.[337] Protected from the intrusion and the competition of the alien,[338] he paid a reduced toll for his merchandize at the entrance of the town; his stall in the market was rented at a lower price than that of the stranger; he had the first choice of storage room in the Guild Hall for his wool or leather or corn; the town clock which tolled the hour when the market might begin, struck for the burgher an hour or two earlier than for strangers and visitors.[339] If a travelling merchant brought his wares to the town the citizen might claim the right of buying whether the owner wished to sell or no, and might insist on a share in the profits of any mercantile venture.[340] He alone might keep apprentices, and become a master in his craft. If he travelled outside his own town for the purpose of trade he carried privilege with him everywhere, and confidently claimed freedom from “pontage” and “passage” and “pesage” and “shewage,”—that is from tolls for crossing bridges, for passing into a town, for the weighing of goods, for showing merchandize in the market,[341]—and from a host of similar imposts. Wherever he went he was shielded by the protection of his fellow citizens;[342] if he had an action for debt in any other town he was granted common letters from the Mayor and Jurats to assist him in his suit;[343] if any wrong was done him they enforced compensation, or they avenged his injuries by confiscating the goods of any merchants within their walls who had come from the offending town.