Burchard too had paid the penalty of his crime. The Karls said that, having quarrelled with Robert, he had been slain by him in a duel, during the time when they were besieged in the tower, but Walter and Walbert affirm that in this they lied, and that in reality he had made his escape, and that he was afterwards captured and executed; and there is also a tradition that he succeeded in escaping altogether from his native land, and after many wanderings at length found refuge in the south of Ireland.
Be this as it may, he had disappeared from Flanders, and thus the great house of Erembald was all but wiped out. Of those who traced their descent in the direct male line to its mighty founder, only Hacket and his little son Robert, a child of tender years, remained alive. The châtelain made his escape from the tower a few days before the surrender. Whether he purchased the good will of one or other of the Isegrin leaders, or whether he had succeeded in hoodwinking them, is uncertain. All we know is that he escaped from Bruges, and, wandering alone across the great salt marsh at the north of the city, presently reached the impregnable stronghold of his son-in-law, Walter Cromlin, the mighty Lord of Lisseweghe, a mere village now, but in those days an important sea-coast town. Here he lay concealed until Dierick of Alsace, more than a year later, brought peace once more to Flanders.
Hacket was shortly afterwards placed on trial, and the fact that he succeeded in clearing his character is proof presumptive that Bertulph, who like his brother Hacket had all along protested his innocence and his capability of proving it, would have likewise been able to make his words good.[13] Immediately after the trial Hacket was restored to his former rank and possessions, we hear nothing more of the charge of serfdom, and for many generations his descendants were mighty men in Flanders. Amongst them note the magnificent Louis of Gruthuise, Peer of Flanders, France and England to boot—Edward IV. created him Earl of Winchester—who in the fourteen hundreds lived in royal state in the beautiful palace on the banks of the Roya, which still goes by his name.
Of Hacket’s subsequent history little is certainly known, but if the conjectures of Olivier de Wree are well founded—and the evidence which he adduces in their support is surely worthy of consideration—the life and career of Desiderius Hacket was indeed a strange and chequered one.
Briefly the facts are as follows. In 1135 Rodolphe of Nesle, a scion of the house of Erembald, was appointed Châtelain of Bruges; the name of Hacket does not cease to appear at the foot of official documents until nearly fifty years later, but whereas previous to 1135 the writer of this signature invariably describes himself as châtelain, subsequent to that date he signs as Canon of St. Donatian’s, later on as Dean of the same church, and later still as Abbot of Dunes.
Bearing in mind the uncommonness of the name, and the fact that we lose all trace of Hacket the layman when Hacket the churchman appears, it would seem in the highest degree probable that the signatures before and after 1135 were the handiwork of one man. That this was certainly the case after that date the testimony of the monastic chroniclers clearly shows. They also tell us something more. The ecclesiastic in question, before he was appointed Abbot of Dunes, for a short time governed a branch house which he himself seems to have founded at Lisseweghe.[14] He was reputed in his day a famous preacher; he was living and signing documents in 1183, and died at an advanced age and in the odour of sanctity. It would seem then that the bellicose Châtelain of Bruges ended his days as a monk.
Strangely enough Hacket’s sworn enemy and rival, the man to whose enmity was due all the misfortune that befell his house, the treacherous Tancmar of Straten himself, towards the close of his life also donned the cowl. He became a monk in the great Benedictine house of St. Andrew hard-by his own estate, and tradition says that he too died a saint.
Surely it is not a little significant that three of the chief actors in this bloody drama should have been numbered by their contemporaries in the ranks of the blessed. Charles, that hero of blood and sentiment, of violence and delicate emotions, who firmly believed that he was dying for justice sake; Straten, the devotee, who for his own ends fanned the flame of his master’s wrath—and poor Hacket, who was accused of murder, escaped by the skin of his teeth, and at length proved his innocence, most probably by the rite of ordeal. The age in which these men lived was an age of contrasts, an age of clashing tones and inharmonious tints. In those days it was the fashion to be devout, and the shibboleth of the fine gentleman was the fervent expression of his unwavering faith.
CHAPTER VII
Bruges in the Days of Charles the Good, etc.
OF the actual buildings of Charles’s day only a few fragments remain: the Chapel of St. Basil, the lower part of the tower of the present cathedral, and perhaps some portion of the Church of Notre Dame; of those associated with his tragic end or the bloody scenes which followed, in all probability no stone is left.