Here then Pr̆emysl could find a tradition which might justify him in developing, without violent change, liberties of the greatest importance to his country; and accordingly in 1213 he grants to the citizens of Freudenthal the settlement of their town “in accordance with that Teutonic law which has hitherto been unwonted and unused in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia; but which, having been granted to you first by our illustrious brother Vladislav, Margrave of Moravia, we confirm with our royal authority.” And then, as an important hint of coming developments, and an indication of the thoroughly national purpose of this movement, he grants them, during the life of himself and his brother, the tithes on the metals found within four miles from the city, to be used for the improvement of the aforesaid city.
But, if the new development of town life took root at this time in the western parts of Bohemia, it seems to have had a still earlier growth in the more eastern province of Moravia. That province had always had peculiar traditions of its own. It was a fragment of the old kingdom of Moravia, and had been incorporated in the Bohemian dukedom, at the time of the Hungarian invasion. It always retained a sense of its important position; and Barbarossa himself had increased that feeling when, in granting the royal crown to Vladislav, he spoke of the new dignity as a revival of the old Moravian kingdom. Moreover, by some means or other, a German element seems to have penetrated into this province; and it is now generally believed that in Moravia, as in Bohemia, the first traditions of municipal self-government were drawn from German sources. Nevertheless, when in 1229 King Pr̆emysl recognised the municipal liberties of Brünn (Brno), he evidently refers to them as connected with local rights which had been traditional for a considerable time in that town; and in the book of decisions of the Moravian municipal tribunals, the Law of Brno is sometimes pitted against that Law of Magdeburg which was generally accepted as the model of town rights. Brünn, too, became in a peculiar manner the centre of the towns of Moravia, and its laws became a new source of life to a great portion of the Bohemian kingdom; and its Book of Rights, with its splendid binding and beautiful illuminations, may still be seen in the town council house at Brünn. So, when in 1229 Pr̆emysl Ottakar confirmed the ancient laws of the province of Brünn, he gave a new, and probably more attractive, impulse to the movement for civic self-government.