Its geographical position between France and Germany, its long coast line, its nearness to England, its numerous navigable streams—all these things rendered the Low Country a region peculiarly adapted to mercantile pursuits; nor was it less favourably situated with regard to that industry which afterwards became, and for centuries remained, the staple trade of the country: the herbage of the seaboard was naturally suited to sheep, from time immemorial vast flocks of them grazed on the polders, and their wool was of the finest quality; thus there was at hand the raw material for the fabrication of cloth.
When the Danish incursion ceased and the land became comparatively tranquil, men soon began to consider how best they might turn these natural advantages to account, and presently along the waterways came bands of wandering traders with rich cargoes from foreign parts: wine from France and from the Rhine-land, silk and spices from Italy, furs from the North—all kinds of merchandise destined to supply the growing needs of the country, or to be exported to England or Denmark, or the regions round the Baltic; and when they had disposed of their wares they would return to the lands from whence they hailed with their barges laden with woollen goods—product of the looms of Flanders. Coming and going, they broke the journey at such places along stream as were best suited to afford accommodation for themselves, their servants, and their draught cattle, and where they would be likely to find a market for what they had to sell: by some castle or abbey or collegiate church, around which clustered the houses of clerks or Court officials, and the homesteads and the hovels of yeomen and serfs. In these settlements, too, they took up their winter quarters, and they often found wives among the daughters of their hosts. When this was so, the place of sojourning became a home—the permanent abode of their little ones and of their women folk, the spot where they purposed to end their days when they had made their fortunes, or, perchance, had been worn out by the hardships of their calling.
Amongst these early traders, the first merchants and the first commercial travellers who gained a livelihood in the Low Country, foreigners there were no doubt, but by far the greater number of them were natives of the soil, and they seem to have been recruited from all ranks of society. Some were knights, who hoped to find the business of buying and selling more profitable than the trade of war; some were Karls from the seaboard, men who had lost their land, if they ever had any to lose, but still retained their freedom, and some were runaway slaves. Matter of little moment, they were birds of passage; no man knew their condition or whence they came, or what lord, if any, claimed their allegiance, and they were all of them treated wherever they went as their own masters. The freedom which they enjoyed compelled association, for since they were no man's vassals no man was bound to protect them; what rights and privileges they possessed were necessarily in their own keeping; hence the great merchant guilds famous in the story of the Netherlands. Meeting together at night to discuss over their liquor their own personal transactions, the guild brethren soon began to consider the public affairs of the settlements in which they dwelt or which they frequented, and little by little to busy themselves with municipal administration, and presently they obtained the charters which gave them a legal standing. Nor were they without funds: their coffers were filled by self-imposed rates, and by fines levied by their elected chiefs for infringements of their rules of association. The money thus raised served for the erection of guild halls and belfries, the building of town walls, the maintenance of waterways, and the making of roads and bridges.
Another element was soon to be added to the population of these river-side settlements of agriculturists and tradesmen: hard on the heels of the merchant came the manufacturer. Thanks to the greater security which the land at this time enjoyed and the consequent increase in the number of its inhabitants, the fens were being drained rapidly, and vast areas which had been lakes were already under pasture; this meant an increase of flocks, and a wool crop so abundant that the shepherds unaided were no longer able to convert the whole of it into cloth. Hence the professional weaver, and the new commercial activity made weaving a profitable profession. The men who adopted it—and their name was legion—naturally flocked to the towns, where, in touch with merchant and trader, they would be likely to find a more ready market for their wares. Like them, and from like motives, they found it expedient to band together, and soon the 'Draperie,' or Cloth Guild, became an institution of mark in the Netherlands.
As for the original settlers—the serfs attached to the soil, the yeoman bound by less stringent ties to the Church or the chief under whose protection they dwelt, the ministeriales who collected manorial fines and dues, administered justice in their lord's name, and managed generally his estate, and who were practically free men—living alongside of the new-comers, often united to them by marriage ties, they gradually adopted their manner of life, and themselves became merchants and manufacturers. For a time they seem to have been submitted to the old manorial régime, but they soon began to agitate for emancipation, and presently they obtained the parchments which gave them complete freedom.
The making of the great commercial and manufacturing centres of mediæval Belgium was for the most part and generally speaking in this wise, but they did not all of them come into being at the same time—not even in the course of the same century. As a rule the towns of Brabant are less ancient than the towns of Flanders, and most of them owe their development less to the river than to the road. It was so with Brussels and Louvain, and, to a certain extent also with Mechlin. Off the main waterways, on the banks of tributary streams, navigable only by light craft, what business they at first did was more or less of a local character. It was not till the opening of the eleven hundreds, when the great high road was made from Bruges to Cologne, passing through Louvain and Brussels, and within easy reach of Mechlin, that these little towns at last became places of importance.
The commercial movement reached Brussels earlier than it reached Louvain. If we may trust St. Guy's anonymous biographer, who lived most probably in the second half of the ten hundreds, there was a settlement of merchants established there at the commencement of the century. He tells us a curious story concerning one of them, a friend of Guy's, who seems to have done a thriving trade.
But first a word as to Guy himself, the poor man of Anderlecht, as people called him—a picturesque and interesting figure from several points of view. To this man—the earliest private inhabitant of Brussels whose name we know, the first of whose doings we have any record, the only one who has ever attained the honours of the altar, the most ancient sanctuary in the town, the crypt of Anderlecht, is dedicated. In this church when he died they laid his body to rest; here his tomb may still be seen, and his bones are still treasured; and strangely enough it was in this same building that in his childhood he used to pray. Then it was the Church of St. Peter; a hundred and fifty years afterwards the dedication was changed, and henceforth men called it the Church of St. Peter and St. Guy. Of this beautiful remnant of a forgotten age we shall have much to say presently. Guy was born somewhere about the middle of the nine hundreds. His parents were very humble folk, probably serfs attached to the soil of Anderlecht. He himself began life as a farm labourer, and his employer's holding seems to have been hard by the Castle of Brussels. A beautiful legend has come down to us concerning him at this time. It was his master's custom to provide the labourers with a mid-day meal, served to them in the fields, and Guy's to carry a portion of his each day to his parents at Anderlecht. One of his comrades, a cross-grained, ill-conditioned fellow, took umbrage at this, and accused him to their master of wasting his time. Next day, during the dinner-hour, the farmer betook himself to the field which Guy was tilling, determined, if his man had played truant, to rate him soundly on his return, but though Guy, as usual, had gone to Anderlecht, when presently he came hurrying back, with no harsh words was he greeted, for during his absence an angel had taken his place at the plough. This story is the subject of an ancient and very beautiful wall painting in the upper church at Anderlecht.
And how many other fairy tales, some of them no less touching, have been woven about the name of this popular hero, the only man of his day whose memory is still green in the city of Brussels! And yet throughout his whole career no deeds which the world calls great are recorded of him. His life for the most part seems to have been an even and uneventful one. He soon gave up farm labour, and for many years he was sacristan to the little church at Laeken, now a populous suburb of Brussels, then a hamlet just outside the town. The last ten years of his life he spent in making two pilgrimages to Jerusalem and in travelling over Europe to visit famous shrines. All these journeys were made on foot, and doubtless they were not devoid of adventure, but his earliest biographer, who wrote nearly a hundred years after his death, has little to tell us on this head. In the fall of the year 1012 he returned to his native village, and in pitiable plight, worn out with want and fever and the wear and tear of the road. The canons of Anderlecht received him into their hospice, where he was tenderly cared for, for nine days, and then at last, on the 12th of September,
