ENGLISH AFFAIRS
1470-1471
In order to follow out the extension of Burgundian jurisdiction in one direction, the course of events in the duke's life has been anticipated a little. The thread of the story now returns to 1469, when Charles and Sigismund separated at St. Omer both well pleased with their bargain. Charles tarried for a time at Ghent and Bruges and then proceeded to Zealand and Holland, where his sojourn had been interrupted in 1468 by his alarm about French duplicity. In the glow caused by his past achievements, his present reputation, and future prospects, Charles of Burgundy was in a mood to prove to his subjects his excellence as a paternal ruler. Wherever he paused on his journey easy access was permitted to his presence and he was lavish in the time given to receiving petitions from the humblest plaintiff. The following gruesome incident is an illustration of the summary methods attributed to him.[1]
Shortly before the ducal visit to Middelburg, the governor, a man of noble birth, a knight, fell in love with a married woman who indignantly repudiated his advances. In revenge the governor had the husband arrested on a charge of high treason. The wife, left without a protector, continued obdurate to the knight until the alternative of her husband's release or his death was offered her as the reward for accepting the governor's base suit or as the penalty of her refusal. She chose to redeem the prisoner. Having paid the price she went to the prison and was led to her husband truly, but he lay dead and in his coffin!
When the Duke of Burgundy was once within the Zealand capital, this injured woman hastened to throw herself at his feet, a petitioner for justice. He heard her complaint and straightway summoned the ex-governor to his presence. The accused confessed that he had been carried away by his adoration for the woman, reminded Charles of his long and faithful devotion to the late duke and to himself, and offered any possible reparation for his crime. The duke ordered him to marry his victim. The widow was horrified at the suggestion, but was forced by her family to accept it. After the nuptial benediction, the knight again appeared before Charles to assure him that the plaintiff was satisfied. "She, yes," replied the duke coldly, "but not I." He remanded the bridegroom to prison, had him shriven and executed all within an hour. Then the bride was summoned and shown her second husband in his coffin as she had seen her first, and on the same spot. "It was a penalty that hit the innocent as well as the guilty, for the plaintiff died from the double shock."
The duke, satisfied with his rigour, went on to Holland. Everywhere he evinced himself equally uncompromising towards the nobles, amiable and considerate towards the lower classes and humble folk. Various other stories related about him at this epoch are difficult to accept as authentic, for the main detail has appeared at other times under different guises. Wandering tales seem to alight, like birds of passage, on successive people in lands and epochs widely apart, mere hallmarks of certain characteristics re-embodied.
The Hague was the duke's headquarters during two months, and there also he held open court and gave audience to many embassies in the midst of his administrative work pertaining to Holland and its nearest neighbours. He took measures to recover what he claimed had been usurped by Utrecht, and he initiated proceedings to make good the title of Lord of Friesland, that will-o'-the wisp to successive Counts of Holland and never acknowledged by the Frisians. In efforts to weld together the various provinces the months passed, until a new turn of foreign events began to absorb the duke's whole attention.
The details of English politics with all the reasons for revolution and counter-revolution involved in the complicated civil disorders, the Wars of the Roses, affected Charles's policy but they can only be suggested in his biography. It must be remembered that the modern impression of English stability and French fickleness in political institutions, an impression casting reflections direct and indirect upon literature as well as history, is based on the changes in France from 1789 down to the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. Quite the reverse is the earlier tradition based on the kaleidoscopic shifts familiar to several generations of observers in the fifteenth century[2]; stable and firm felt the French as they heard the tidings of the brief triumphs of belligerent factions across the Channel.
Since 1461, Henry VI. of the House of Lancaster had been a passive prisoner, while Margaret of Anjou had exhausted herself in efforts to win adherents at home and abroad for her captive husband and her exiled son.[3] In 1463, she had received some aid, some encouragement from Philip of Burgundy, although he had recognised Edward IV. as king and although, too, his personal sympathies were Yorkish rather than Lancastrian.
It was Charles who escorted the errant lady into Lille, but later the duke himself entertained her munificently. The poverty-stricken exile probably found the accompanying ducal gifts more to the immediate purpose than the ducal feasts. Two thousand gold crowns were bestowed upon herself, a hundred upon each of her ladies, while various Lancastrian nobles were tided over hard times by useful sums of money.