In vain Bourchard journeyed to Rome, there to plead his cause in person. The Pope, instead of granting the dispensation he asked, imposed on him, by way of penance, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
It was about this time that Baldwin of Constantinople again returned to Flanders. Chief amongst those who rallied to his standard were the friends and supporters of Bourchard d’Avesnes (no small number), and so long as Baldwin prospered, Bourchard’s hope rose high. By what means the Emperor of Constantinople fell a victim to his daughter and to Louis of France (Philip Augustus had died two years before) we have already seen, and when Louis crushed Baldwin, he at the same time crushed Bourchard. The last hopes of the Lord of Avesnes were buried in the grave of Baldwin of Constantinople. But Bourchard had not yet drained the cup of his humiliation. During the year 1226 he was destined to taste all its bitterness. Enraged at the support which he had given to the hermit of Glançon, Louis forced the Princess Marguerite to come forth from the retreat where she had remained since her separation from her husband, break her plighted troth, and take a new spouse in the person of William of Dampierre. In vain Pope Honorius charged the Bishop of Soissons ‘to make diligent inquiry, lest haply there should be some impediment by reason of kinship.’ In vain rumour said that William, like Bourchard, was a sub-deacon; the marriage was celebrated without delay, and it was not until four years later that a Papal dispensation was obtained from the impediment of consanguinity.
How Louis induced Marguerite to take the step in question we are ignorant, but about this time Ferdinand obtained his liberty, and it may well be that the French King made his release conditional on Jeanne’s bringing her influence to bear on her sister, and we know by the testimony of Marguerite’s own sons that it was ‘chiefly through the evil counsel of her sister Jeanne that she at last consented to the marriage. The same witnesses inform us that Marguerite handed them over to the tender mercies of her new husband, who imprisoned them ‘for ten years or thereabouts et multa mala eis fecit cum non haberent custodem sen defensorem.’
For the rest—when William died, the sons of the Lord of Avesnes at length obtained their liberty and returned to Flanders, and the last days of their much-tried father, now an old man tottering to the grave, were in all probability cheered and consoled by the presence of those sons for whose sake he had sacrificed so much.
As for Marguerite herself, she never again saw the man who had served her so devotedly, and whom she had so deeply wronged. The child love of earlier and happier days had given place to hatred so unrelenting, so cruel, that when Bourchard himself had passed away she did not hesitate to visit it on his children. Indeed, after Marguerite had become Countess of Flanders, the one object in her life seems to have been to exclude them from all part in their inheritance. If she could have had her way, the issue of William of Dampierre would have been declared the only legal heirs, alike of Hainault and of Flanders. Again and again at Marguerite’s instance the facts of this antiquated matrimonial suit, every one of which had happened fifty years before, were discussed by grave divines. Again and again the Countess of Flanders dragged her honour in the dust, and besmirched the memory of her dead husband, in the hope of proving the illegitimacy of the children she had borne him. The case was heard in the ecclesiastical courts of France; it was food for the delectation of imperial judges, and its merits were considered by the lawyers of the Roman Curia over and over again, but in spite of the pains which Marguerite had taken to blacken her own character, in each case she was declared innocent—the children of Bourchard d’Avesnes had been certainly born in wedlock. Marguerite, however, refused to acquiesce, and it was not until the land had been drenched with blood by the supporters of the rival claimants, and Guy and William of Dampierre had both fallen into the hands of their opponents, that at length this implacable old woman and all other parties concerned agreed to refer the matters in dispute to the arbitration of that marvellous peacemaker, St. Louis of France, who awarded Hainault to the heirs of Bourchard d’Avesnes, and to the Dampierres, Flanders. A decision to which each party was constrained to submit, and when Marguerite died, Guy de Dampierre became Count of Flanders, and Jean d’Avesnes Count of Hainault.