But this was not all. Under the fostering care of this prince, and thanks to the very large charter of liberties which he granted, the trade of Flanders increased by leaps and bounds. ‘In these days,’ we read, ‘the ports of Montreuil and Boulogne were full of shipping, and traders from all sides crowded to Bruges, already famous by reason of the rich merchandise they brought there.’ Nor did the national prosperity diminish when, in 1036, the old Count was gathered to his fathers. So greatly had Bruges increased, that his son Baldwin of Lille found it necessary, during the third year of his reign, to rebuild and extend its walls.
It was about this time that Flanders first began to consider herself the common fatherland of all foreigners who chose to reside within her borders. Indeed, Baldwin of Lille seems to have kept open house at Bruges for all the political refugees of the period. Hither, in 1036, came Emma of England, widow of Canute the Great, driven into exile by the machinations of Godwin, and the accession of her step-son Harold I.
Here she was joined later on by her own son Harthacnut, and here that prince received the English envoys when, upon the death of Harold in 1040, they waited on him with an offer of the English throne.
Queen Emma was a daughter of Duke Richard the Fearless of Normandy, and consequently the first cousin of Baldwin of the Long Beard. She did not prolong her stay at Bruges after Harthacnut’s acceptance of the throne of England, but four years later Count Baldwin had an opportunity of receiving another English connection, the Princess Gunhilda, a niece of Canute the Great. She was accused of having opposed the election of King Edward the Confessor, and forthwith fled to Bruges.
When, in 1047, Godwin’s son Swegen was outlawed, he too found shelter at Bruges, and when, four years later, the great English Earl himself had to flee his native land, he directed his steps to the same retreat. It was, doubtless, at his palace in the Bourg that Baldwin entertained his guests, and most likely the Crypt of St. Basil—sole relic of Bruges as Godwin saw it—was the place where they went to pray. Here Earl Godwin remained all the winter, busy with many things, anon negotiating a marriage for Tostig with Baldwin’s daughter Judith, anon constructing a great fleet with which he would presently conquer the right to live in peace on his native soil.
Shortly before Baldwin’s death, another great Englishman came to Flanders, perhaps to Bruges.
Hereward, son of Leofric, the last man who defied the right of the Conqueror’s sword. Here he found for himself a wife, and here he would have ended his days in peace had not the insults heaped on his mother called him back to England. With him there went a band of Karls, and with him they laid down their lives at Thorney. If there had been in England three men like him, runs an old rhymed chronicle, the French would have never landed, and if he had only lived, he would have driven them back to France.
About this time, too, there came to Bruges two other victims of the Conqueror’s ambition. Githa, Earl Godwin’s widow, and his daughter, Gunhilda. Of Githa’s subsequent career we are ignorant, but Gunhilda made Bruges her principal residence for nearly twenty years. Here she died on the 24th August 1087, and by way of acknowledgment for the kindness she had received at the hands of the burghers, she bequeathed her jewels to their Collegiate Church—jewels so precious that, when they were sold a century later, a sufficient sum was realized to pay for its restoration. They laid her to rest in the cloister of St. Donatian, and when, in 1786, her tomb was opened, they found therein a leaden tablet, still preserved in the Cathedral of Bruges, on which was graved the story of her virtues and her sorrows.
Baldwin of Lille was succeeded by his second son, Baldwin the Good. The tumultuous days of his immediate successors and the harshness and violence of nearly all the sovereigns who followed them, have enhanced perhaps the glory of his good fame. Be this as it may, the old Flemish chroniclers delight to dwell on the story of this gentle youth, but his name is not linked with Bruges.
He was a prince, they tell us, of wondrous dignity, and yet of a disposition so sweet that all men were drawn to him. He alone of the Counts of Flanders never once unsheathed his sword, and so great was his love of peace that he would never suffer his subjects to do so. ‘His officers carried white wands, long and straight, symbols of justice and mercy,’ and they maintained such good order throughout his domains, that no man was fain at night to bar his doors against thieves, and when the husbandman went home in the evening, he did not fear to leave his ploughshare in the fields, and this is the reason, they add, why all men called him ‘the good Count of Flanders.’