The Cartulary of the Guillems of Montpellier presents an unusually full record of the activities of a noble family of southern France between the last decades of the eleventh century and the earliest years of the thirteenth. Only the ''Cartulary of the Trencavels'' of Beziers, still unpublished,〔This cartulary, the ''Liber instrumentorum vicecomitalium'', was first edited and published in 1993 by Hélène Débax.〕 or the ''Liber feudorum'' of the Counts of Barcelona〔This is the ''Liber feudorum maior'', though there was also a less extensive ''Liber feudorum Ceritaniae'' compiled for the Counts of Barcelona about the same time as the Guilhem cartulary.〕 can be compared to it; and each of these is much less complete. The Cartulary is preserved primarily because after 1204 most of the heritage of the Guillems was taken over by the commune or town of Montpellier in a corporate sense. Since the town wished to exercise the rights that originally were those of its noble seigneurs, it was to the advantage of the townsmen to preserve intact the record of those rights and privileges which were contained in the Cartulary.