Of the relations between the Dukes and the clergy it must suffice to say that they were largely determined by considerations of interest, and drawn closer by the unpopularity of both prince and priesthood in the towns. Duke Philip contrived to place his illegitimate brother John in the see of Cambray, while two of his own bastards held the great ecclesiastical principality of Liege. Notwithstanding the Church’s acquisitions of landed property, which here as elsewhere legislation sought to stay, the secular arm occasionally appealed to the spiritual for its aid against civic recalcitrance, and now and then supported the clergy when at issue with the towns. Yet such was the perversity of Charles the Bold, which left no section of his subjects ,to lament his downfall, that he, who at the beginning of his reign had protected the churches of Liege from sharing in the general doom of the city, was at its close generally hated by the Netherlands clergy, for having overtaxed them as he had their flocks. The principles and policy of the Burgundian dynasty found their most skilful agents in the highly-trained lawyers who, after studying in France, at Louvain, or in the University founded by Philip in Franche Comte, held high judicial office in the Netherlands. The ground had been in some measure prepared for them, at all events in Flanders, though it was precisely here that the judicial innovations of this period met with the most stubborn resistance. The so-called Audiences of the Count, based to some extent on the ancient usage of conveying “quiet truths” to him, led the way to the establishment of the Count’s Council, which in 1385 Philip the Bold transformed into the Chamber of the Duke’s Council in Flanders, subdividing it into a judicial and a financial Chamber. The latter remained at Lille, whence Philip the Good extended its operations to Namur, Hainault, and the towns on the Somme, while the two financial chambers of Holland and Zeeland, and of Brabant, were united by him at Brussels in 1463. The judicial Chamber on the other hand, which came to be generally known as the Council of Flanders, was, after many shiftings of place, finally brought back to Ghent in 1452; the Council of the Counts of Holland, and that of the Dukes of Brabant, having been alike reformed on the acknowledgment of Philip’s sovereignty. In each case the substance of the reform lay in the introduction, by the side of the great lords and officials previously composing the Council, of trained lawyers, devoted to the maintenance of the ducal authority, and inclined to stimulate its self-consciousness. In order, however, to make this authority really supreme, and to avoid the possibility of any appeal to the Parliament of Paris, Philip in 1446, without putting an end to the Privy Council which ordinarily attended him, established a Grand Council, attached to his own person and entrusted with supreme judicial as well as political and financial functions. The centralising process was carried to its final stage by Charles the Bold’s settlement of 1473, which maintained the Grand Council as a Council of State for the whole of his dominions, but transferred its financial functions to a Chamber finally fixed at Malines, absorbing into this the Brussels Chamber of Accounts. Charles also established a central judicial Court at Malines, which he sought to surround with all possible external dignity, frequently presiding in person at his sittings. But it remained unpopular, by reason of its slow Roman procedure, and the use of the French language to which it adhered; nor did it survive his fall.
As a matter of course, both Philip and Charles had from time to time to summon the “States” of the several lands; for there was no other way of obtaining the extraordinary aids (beden) required more especially for their wars. In the meetings of these “States” the attendance of the nobles gradually slackened, and (notably in Holland) only the larger towns were regularly represented. For the rest, no town or “State” was bound except by its own vote. It was again noinnovation when, in 1428, Philip caused his settlement with Jacqueline to be confirmed by a meeting of representatives of all the lands whose allegiance she had formerly claimed. And it was only a step further when, after two previous meetings in 1463-4 he in 1465 formally called upon all the States of the Low Countries assembled at Brussels to recognise his son as his successor and Lieutenant general, and at the same time obtained from them a supply enabling him to carry on effective war against Louis XI. Charles the Bold thrice assembled these States-General; but they do not appear to have regularly comprised representatives of the whole of his Netherlands dominions. Thus this all-important institution never passed beyond an initial stage under either of the last two Burgundian Dukes; though Philip had faithful servants who advised him to trust those trusted by his subjects. Indeed, an outline of the constitutional system to which the occasional convocation of the States-General pointed has actually been preserved, dating from an early period of his reign.
After Philip had, like his father before him, found the communal militia of the Flemish towns untrustworthy in foreign war, he had for his military needs fallen back on the feudal services upon which the first two Burgundian Dukes had placed a precarious dependence; but the forces which he employed for the overthrow of the liberties of Ghent, and which his heir led forth against Louis XI on behalf of the League of the Common Good, already comprised a considerable element of mercenary soldiers-Picards and English in particular. The bandes (Pordonnance of Charles the Bold, a modified imitation of the new French model, were partly recruited among the nobility, partly made up of Italian heavy infantry and the indispensable English archers; and a select body-guard was formed on a similar basis. In 1471 he raised a permanent force of 10,000 men. The towns had to equip contingents at their own expense, but under officers named by the Duke. He improved his artillery, and paid attention to the fighting qualities of his navy. Though Charles was both an unskilful and an unfortunate commander, he was the creator of the standing army which proved so formidable under the rule of his descendants; much of his military expenditure was unavoidable, since the superiority of regular troops over feudal levies was already proved; and he deserves credit for his consistent niaintenance of discipline, more especially as it only increased his unpopularity.
It has frequently been assumed that the progress of art and literature in the Netherlands must have benefited by the patronage of an open-handed dynasty and a sumptuous Court. But, although the Renaissance owed not a little to the goodwill of Philip the Good and his family, they either used its culture as a political expedient or (in Voltaire’s phrase) treated it as a passe-temps. The triumphs of a late and rich variety of the Gothic style attested by so many municipal and ecclesiastical edifices of the fifteenth century are due to the towns, although in so many instances their decadence had already set in. The case was different with the sister-art, which in Flanders was emancipated from Byzantine models (introduced by the Crusades) by the great painters to whom the miniaturists had formed a characteristic transition. When Hubert van Eyck dijed in 1420, he bequeathed the completion of the masterpiece of the school of Bruges to his younger brother John. Within fourteen further years the latter, who was soon made a member of Duke Philip’s household, perfected a form of art that clothed its simple ideals of faith and devotion in the golden splendour of the age of its origin. Its latest great master, Memling, carried far beyond the borders of his native land the purest and profoundest pictorial expression of the mystic depth of religious sentiment.
Leaving aside other forms of art-among which something might be said of the attention paid by both Flemings and Walloons to that of music-we find that already under the House of Dampierre, the French literature patronised by the Counts, and the Flemish that was dear to the people, had gone far asunder. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, French historic prose as it were annexed the Netherlands as part of its proper domain. Froissart, the chief prophet of the last phase of chivalry radiating from the Court of the Burgundian Dukes and the exemplar of a whole