The term burgher has generally been understood to designate the inhabitant of a city, whose quiet and orderly life was passed in occupations of trade and industry; but such burghers were surely not to be found in the kingdom of Jerusalem; for the burghers sprang from the common people, of which the accounts of the Crusades made the chief portion of the army of the Crusaders to have consisted; and when we remember how little respect these showed for the princes in the army—that they once chose Godfrey Burel out of their own number as their leader—we shall not be astonished that there arose from this class of warriors a population who were not to be subjected to a humiliating position in relation to the chivalry.

A free and vigorous life shows itself in the whole system of law which governed these burghers. Here we meet, for the first time in the middle ages, the principles of marine and commercial law, rising above the then rather limited views of the Roman law on those subjects, which in the German law books are not mentioned at all. We find among other things strict personal arrest of delinquent debtors—a very ingenious provision against fraud—and a settlement of those cases of intervention which have so troubled our jurists, by an application of the rule, 'The hand must defend the hand,' as follows:

'Be it known that if any one lend his horse to another, and the latter say to him: 'To-morrow I shall bring your horse back,' and being allowed to take the horse away, he is apprehended by another person for debt, this creditor may take the borrowed horse for his debt.'

The two following laws give us something of an insight into the condition of the kingdom of the Crusaders, the one in relation to servants, the other in relation to physicians:

'When it shall happen that a man or woman hire a man servant or a chambermaid, reason requires that the man or woman who hires them shall have power to dismiss them at will, because they are bound for their wages only so long as they serve. But the servant or maid cannot separate themselves from their master or mistress without their consent until the termination of the engagement. But when the servant or maid thus hired shall wish to go back over the sea, reason requires that the man or woman grant them leave, because they wish to cross the sea, and they shall pay them according to the time of service. * * * When, however, servant or maid shall depart without such leave, they break faith and forfeit their wages for the whole time of service. And if such servant be found with any other person in the kingdom, his or her hand with which they made promise to serve and afterward denied God and broke faith, shall be pierced through with a red-hot iron.'

Again:

'When it shall happen that any one hire a servant or chambermaid, become angry with him or her, and box their ears, and the latter enter complaint to the court, reason requires that the man or woman be not subject to judicial proceeding for a simple boxing of the servant's ears. But if the man or woman shall excessively beat the servant or maid, or cause the same to be done, or shall inflict upon them an open wound, and they shall enter complaint of the same to the court, law and reason require that the servant or maid receive justice the same as against strangers.'

In regard to physicians, the assizes provide as follows:

'If by any mishap I wound one of my slaves, or the same be wounded by any other person, and I call a physician, who agrees with me to heal him for a stipulated price, and then says to me on the third day, after having well observed the wound, that he can heal it without fail, and it come to pass, because he uses the lancet unskilfully, or when he should not have used it at all, or because when he should have cut the wound or swelling in the top or lengthwise he cut it obliquely, and the patient die in consequence; or when the slave's wound is in such place as to require warm applications, for instance upon the brain or nerves, and the physician always makes cold ones; or if my slave have a swelling upon a part where emollients should be applied to mollify the sore and cause suppuration and discharge, and the physician make always warm and dry applications by which the sore is internally inflamed, and he die of it; or if the physician do not attend him every day, and he die in consequence, reason requires that he pay what the slave was justly worth before he fell sick, or what the owner had paid for him; for this is right and reasonable, according to the assizes of Jerusalem. And the court shall expel that physician from the city where he performed such malpractice. But if the physician can show before the court that the patient drank wine or ate meat which he had forbidden, or did anything else which he should not have done at all, or at least not so soon as he did, reason requires that, even though the physician could or should have treated him differently, he should not be made to pay for him; for it is more reasonable to suppose that death followed from the patient's doing what was forbidden than in consequence of the medical treatment. But if the physician make no prohibition in regard to eating or drinking, he must still pay for him, for the physician is justly bound, as soon as he sees a patient, to direct what he shall eat and what he shall not eat, and if he do not do this, and mischance occur, it should come upon him.'

'And if a physician be guilty of such malpractice in case of a Frankish man or woman, reason requires that he should be hanged.'

We can see from this assize that a law sometimes effects the opposite of that which was intended, and unreasonable provisions oppress the patient instead of the physician. Amalrick I fell sick, and felt that he needed an aperient, but the Syrian physicians refused to prescribe such. He sent for the European physicians, and they also declined to take the hazard of prescribing. To obtain the prescription there was no alternative but to issue a royal rescript absolving the physicians beforehand from the provisions of this assize. In the mean time, however, the favorable period passed by and the king died.