For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE oldest, and perhaps the strongest, link which binds England to the continent of Europe is the relation of this country to Flanders. There, on the eastern shore of the German Ocean, where Charlemagne planted a Saxon colony a thousand years ago on the littus Saxonicum, still lives a people singularly congenial to ourselves. The same eager pursuit of trade, the same skill in manufactures, the same attachment to municipal government and political freedom, and during many centuries a common fear of France, united the people of England to the people of Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp. In times of trouble and persecution many an English fugitive found a refuge in the Scheldt; and from the counts of Flanders to the dukes of Burgundy, and even to their Spanish descendants and heirs, the rulers of the Low Countries almost invariably looked to the alliance and support of the English crown. To this day the independence of Belgium is an object of paramount interest to England. The history of the Commons of Flanders is therefore one of peculiar interest to ourselves, and we shall make no apology for presenting to our readers an episode taken from these Flemish annals. A great English poet has already given to the name of Philip van Arteveld a lasting place in English literature. Our present subject concerns the father of that eminent person, whose character and fate were not less heroic and tragical than those of his son. 3. Annales de Flandres de P. d'Oudegherst. Par M. LESBROUSSART. Gand: 1789. The numerous works placed at the head of this article sufficiently indicate the interest which attaches to the family of Arteveld, and we are indebted to them and to some researches of our own for the story we are about to lay before our readers. Casting about for allies to aid him in enforcing his claim to the crown of France, Edward III. was counselled by his father-in-law, the count of Hainault, to secure the support of the Flemish Communes. The chief manufacturing towns of Flanders had been alienated from their Own count, Louis de Nevers times called Louis de Crécy - by reason of his grievous exactions and entire submission to his overlord, the king of France. some It was at the instigation of Philip of Valois that, in the autumn of 1336, the count, without either provocation or warning, threw into prison every Englishman found within his territories. There was nothing he more desired than Philip's object was plainly manifest. to bring about a rupture between England and Flanders, for he had observed with much anxiety the excellent relations, based on mutual interests, that had sprung up between the wool-producers of the one country and the manufacturers of the other. As it chanced, he overshot the mark. Edward indeed shortly afterwards retaliated by arresting the Flemings within his own dominions, and prohibiting the exportation of wool. Deprived of the raw material of their industry, the Flemish looms were thrown out of work, and the weavers were reduced to destitution. They were sufficiently logical, however, to trace their sufferings to their true source, and to regard as their real enemy not the English monarch, but their own sovereign. Edward, moreover, took some trouble to exculpate himself, and assured both the count of Flanders and the mag 4. Korte Levensschets van Jacob van Arteveld.istrates of the chief towns that he much Door LIEVEN EVERWYN. Gent: 1845. 5. Mémoires sur la ville de Gand. Par le Chevalier CHARLES-LOUIS DIERICX. Gand: 1814. 6. Cronijcke van den Lande ende Graefscepe van Vlaenderen. Gemaect door JOR. NICOLAES Despars. Te Brugge: 1839. desired to revive the old friendship which had proved so pleasant and advantageous alike to them and to his own subjects. To these overtures Louis de Nevers 7. Memorie Boek der Stadt Ghent, 1301-1737. turned a deaf ear, for the privations of his Ghent: 1839. 8. Le Siècle des Artevelde. Par LEON VANDER people were, in his eyes, of much less KINDERE, Professeur à l'Université de Bruxelles. importance than the favor of the prince at whose court he habitually resided. Bruxelles: 1879. as "eques Flandrus nobilissimus," as a citizen of Ghent, and "baro præcipuus Flandriæ." Jehan le Bel, too, has a good word to say for him, as "ung vaillant chevalier ancyen qui démeuroit à Gand, et y estoit moult fort aimé. L'appeloit-on," he continues, "Messire Courtesin, et estoit chevalier banneret; et le tenoit-on pour le plus preu chevalier de Flandre, et pour le plus vaillant homme, et qui le plus vassaument avoit toudis servi les seigneurs." These services were now forgotten, as well as the prowess which had won the honor of knighthood on the field of battle. Like the Van Artevelds, Sohier de Courtrai* belonged to the commercial nobility, and was, consequently, rather popular with the citizens than acceptable to the count. It is certain that his hospitable reception of Edward's envoys gave sore umbrage to Louis de Nevers, who invited him to Bruges to attend a general assembly of deputies from the Flemish Communes. The invitation was accepted, but on his arrival the aged knight was treacherously arrested and conveyed to the Château de Rupelmonde on the Scheldt. In vain did the towns of Flanders implore the count to release his venerable prisoner, nor was the Duke of Brabant's intercession a whit more effica cious. The count also attempted to intercept the English envoys, but they, being timely warned, returned home by way of Holland. In the following year the States of Flan-Tronchiennes, the grandfather of the ders, Brabant, and Hainault, entered into brewer, if we follow M. Auguste Voisin an offensive and defensive alliance, by -or his father-in-law, if we adopt the which they agreed to refer all future dis-guidance of Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove. putes between themselves to arbiters In either case, he is described by Meyer chosen from among their most eminent townsmen, and to reopen commercial relations with England. These resolutions having been communicated to Edward, he lost no time in deputing the Bishop of Lincoln and the Earls of Huntingdon and Salisbury to negotiate personally with the great men and great cities of Flanders. His envoys were instructed to express the king's readiness to re-establish the woolstaple in that province whence it had been removed to Dordrecht, and to betroth his daughter Joan to the count's son, Louis de Mâle- so called from a château near Bruges in which he was born, and which is still inhabited. The Flemings naturally attached immense importance to having a depot or emporium of wool in one of their own cities, because, as we read in the "Cronique de Flandres :"*"Toute Flandres estoit fondée sur draperie, et sans laine on ne pouvoit draper." The English envoys appear to have visited "the three good towns" of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, but it was in Ghent they made their longest stay, and, according to Froissart, "spent such sums that gold and silver seemed to fly out of their hands." With all their patriotism the worthy Flemings had a keen eye to their personal interests; and Walsingham sarcastically remarks, "Plus saccos quam Anglos venerabantur." There is reason to believe that Jacob van Arteveld played a conspicuous part in the negotiations which ensued, and Sismondi is scandalized that a prelate so eminent as the Bishop of Lincoln should have condescended to hold any sort of intercourse with a dealer in hydromel. A genial hospitality was at the same time exercised towards the English nobles by Zegher or Sohier de Courtrai, lord of Dronghen or * Cronique de Flandres, anciennement composée par auteur incertain, et nouvellement mise en lumière par Denis Sauvage de Fontenailles en Brie, Historiographe du Très Chrétien Roy Henry, second de ce Lyon, 1572. nom. "L'évêque de Lincoln ne dédaigna point de traiter avec ce bourgeois, qui levoit contre son souverain l'étendard de la révolte." Hist. des Français, tome x. Paris, 1828. Irritated by the failure of his conciliatory measures, Edward despatched an expedition against Cadzand, a small island lying at the entrance of Sluys harbor, and a favorite station of the French cruisers employed in intercepting English vessels laden with wool. After a stout resistance by the men of Bruges, the count's brother was taken prisoner, five hundred Flemings were put to the sword, and the place given up to plunder. The loyalty of the Bruges citizens was rewarded by permission to * Translated by Carte "Lord of Courtesy," vol. iii., bk. x. restore the fortifications of their town, | tion of the Paddenhoek, or Toads' Corwhich had been partially demolished after ner, saying one to another: "Come along the rout at Cassel in 1328. A heavy fine let us hear what this man of wit has to was at the same time imposed upon the say!"* They found him whom they burghers of Ghent, who pleaded earnestly sought standing with his back to his own for pardon their delegates falling on door. He listened to their complaints, their knees before the count, whose re- but reserved his reply for the following sentment was to be pacified neither by day, December 27, 1337, when he invited money nor by submission. Their misery all who cared to hear him to assemble at had become almost intolerable. The arti- the monastery of Biloke. This wise and sans were reduced to the utmost destitu- discreet citizen was named Jacob van tion. Some idea may be formed of the Arteveld, generally represented as a sediprivations they were compelled to un- tious fellow, of low extraction, ready to dergo by imagining what might have been sacrifice king, earl, and country, to enrich the condition of the Lancashire opera- and aggrandize himself. It is worth a tives during the civil war in North Amer- little trouble to trace this calumny to ica had there been no poor-law to afford its origin, and to restore the so-called relief, and no charitable fund to preserve" Brewer of Ghent" to his true position the semblance of a home for necessitous in history as a far-seeing statesman and families. No such aid was forthcoming an enlightened, disinterested patriot. in Ghent. Not a few of the weaver class emigrated to England, where they were kindly received and enabled to commence life afresh in a foreign land, and where, Michelet assures us, they imparted solidity to the English character, and developed habits of patience, industry, and perseverance. These fugitives settled themselves in the eastern counties, particularly at Worstead in Norfolk, which, indeed, became famous for a particular kind of yarn spun from combed wool. Bands of starving men paraded the streets of Ghent, shouting "Vriheden ende neeringhen!"— Liberty and work! - while idle ruffians inspired the peaceful inhabitants with well-grounded alarm, and compelled the white-hooded magistrates to exercise a ruthless severity. This article will have been written in vain if the reader does not rise from its perusal with the conviction that to Jacob van Arteveld is justly applicable the eulogy which Clarendon passed upon John Hampden: "He was, indeed, a very wise man and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, and the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever knew." Gilles li Muisis, abbot of St. Martin's Monastery at Tournai, who died about the middle of the fourteenth century, says, under the date of 1345- only eight years before his own death- that Arteveld "regnavit per septem annos, et fuit gubernator et superior totius villæ Gantii ac totius patriæ Flandriæ, et ad ejus imperium et voluntatem obediebant, et nihil in dictâ patriâ fiebat sine eo." He adds that he was always accompanied by twenty-five to thirty armed men "fortissimis et ad bella promptissimis. Et multa mala evenerunt per eum et propter eum." This small band of followers was increased to sixty or eighty by the canon Jehan le Bel, who belonged to one of the noblest families of Liége, and died about the year 1370. Describing the ill feeling that existed between Louis de Nevers and the Flemings, he proceeds to remark: — Happily, at that critical moment a rumor went abroad that a rich burgher, a man of foresight and discretion, had been heard to say that he knew a remedy for the existing evils, and that, if his advice were followed, plenty would soon take the place of want. It was Christmas-time, but no season of rejoicing for those who were clamoring for bread for their wives and little ones. As usually happens on occasions of enforced idleness, crowds of men out of employment gathered together at the corners of streets and in marketplaces, when suddenly, as by a common "Alons, alons oyr le bon conseil du saige homme," impulse, they began to move in the direc-is Froissart's dramatic expression. |