The study looks first at the political measures of the Council vis-à-vis the guilds and the local 'mercantile aristocracy', the stance taken by the Council on problems of domestic policy and its evaluation of the behaviour of the (craft) guilds, which in its turn determined the political action it took. The perspective then changes to the political attitudes and notions of those citizens not represented in the chronicles of the time - the craftsmen making up the membership of the guilds.