A more lasting influence was however being quietly exercised by a school of religious thinkers, to which in the latter half of the century two notable Netherlander belonged. The theology of John (Pupper) of Goch in the duchy of Cleves, who is believed to have been educated in one of the Brethren’s schools, and who for nearly a quarter of a century presided over a priory of Austin canonesses founded by him at Malines in 1451, rejected the pretensions of mere outward piety and dead formalism. There is no proof that his writings which were read by few were known to Luther; but they must have come under the notice of Erasmus. The step to the assertion of the universal priesthood of Christian believers was taken by a bolder thinker, John Wessel (Goesevort), who, born at Groningen about the year 1420, was educated in the school of the Brotherhood at Zwolle, but afterwards studied in most of the chief universities of Europe. He was honoured by both Luther and Melanchthon, but he never took Orders, and his academic distinction is his chief title to fame (magister contradictionum). He enjoyed the patronage of Bishop David of Utrecht; but his favourite residence seems to have been the Frisian convent of Adwert, to which a species of high school was attached. Lover of truth as he was, and in one respect at least (viz. as to the doctrine of the Eucharist) even further advanced than Luther, he disliked any appeal to the passions of the people, and had as little thought as Bishop David himself of an open rupture with the Church.
II.
When the death of Charles the Bold at Nancy was ascertained, Louis prepared to seize those parts of the ducal dominions which were nearest to his hand and indispensable for the future of the French monarchy, while keeping in view the ultimate acquisition of them all. He proclaimed his anxiety for the interest of Charles1 daughter and heiress whom he had held at the font; but the project of a marriage between Mary, now close upon her twenty-first year, and the Dauphin, a boy of eight, was full of difficulty, more especially as the suit of Maximilian had already reached an advanced point. This prince’s father was naturally not less anxious to preserve the cohesion of the Burgundian inheritance than Louis XI had been prompt to impair it; and from him no revival was to be apprehended of those questions as to male or female fiefs which had of old divided the Netherlands. All the more important was the attitude of the country itself towards the French intervention.
Almost simultaneously with the prompt mission of the Count of Craon into Burgundy, Louis had despatched to Picardy and Artois the High Admiral of France (the Bastard of Bourbon), accompanied by Commines, to demand the surrender of all fiefs of the French Crown, and in the first instance of the towns on the Somme. His plans were vast, but according to Commines the reverse of vague. Namur, Hainault, and other parts near his borders were to be made over to some of his French vassals, and Brabant and Holland to German princes whom he would thus bind to his alliance. The French fief of Flanders he must have intended to secure for his Crown, of which it would still have been one of the brightest jewels. The towns on the Somme were one after the other-some by golden keys-opened to him; and the defection of Philip de Crevecceur placed him in possession of the Boulonnais. Mary’s letter of January 23 to the ducal council at Dijon, protesting against French encroachments in the duchy of Burgundy and the Franche Comte, held out no prospect of armed resistance on her own part; and indeed any attempt of the kind was out of the question. At Ghent, where she was detained whether she would or not, and in the other towns of Flanders and Brabant, the confirmation of the tidings of her father’s death had been received with general feelings of relief and joy, and throughout the Netherlands it was resolved to make the most of the opportunity.
By the beginning of February, the Four Members of Flanders, the three Estates of Brabant and Hainault, and the deputies of the States of Holland were assembled at Ghent. In the hands of these representatives of the vier landen, who explicitly took it upon themselves to act on behalf of the country at large, the executive remained till the Austrian marriage, and their united action imposed upon the lady of Burgundy the grant of the great charter of Netherlands liberties, and of the special charters which supplemented it. The importance of the promises comprised in the Groote Privilegie of February 10, 1477, lies not so much in its sweeping invalidation of all previous ducal ordinances antagonistic to communal privileges, or even in the assertion of principles more or less indigenous to all the Low Countries under Burgundian rule, as in the announcement of a definite machinery for their future government. It was, no doubt, of moment to provide that no war could be declared and no marriage concluded by the ducal sovereign without the consent of the States; to establish the necessity of their approval for fresh taxes, to confine the tenure of office to natives, to insist on the use of the national tongue in all public documents, to secure to the several provinces the control of the government’s commercial policy and a check upon the use of its military force. But the chief political significance of the new constitution was directly constructive. While abolishing the central judicial Court or Parliament of Malines, it reorganised the Grand Council, attached to the person of the sovereign, on a broad representative basis. It was to consist, in addition to the princes of the dynasty, of the Chancellor and twenty-three other members named for life by the sovereign, nobles and trained lawyers in equal proportions, and assigned on a fixed scale to each of the provinces of the land. Every precaution was used for ensuring a paramount regard on the part of the Council for the privileges and usages of provinces and towns, and every facility provided for the assembling on their own motion of the States of the whole of the ducal dominions-the States-General.
The Great Privilege was supplemented by several special applications of its principles to the needs of particular provinces. These were the Flemish Privilege, obtained on the same day by the Four Members of Flanders, upon whose unanimous consent it made any future constitutional change depend, while no Flemish business was to be transacted except on Flemish soil and in the Flemish tongue; the Great Privilege of Holland and Zeeland (February 17), which contained similar provisions and granted full liberty to the towns to hold “Parliaments” of their own, in conjunction with the other States of the Netherlands or not; the Great Privilege of Namur (May), and the Joyeuse Entree granted to Mary on the occasion of her being acknowledged at Leuven as Duchess of Brabant (May 29), which, while returning to the usages confirmed at the accession of Philip the Good, added new liberties and doubled the measure of restrictions upon the ducal, power.
Thai fear of France rather than any affection for the Burgundian dynasty, or even any warmth of feeling towards Mary herself, had induced the representatives of the vier landen to come to terms with her, was shown by the military preparations upon which they simultaneously agreed. In place of the ducal army which had ceased to exist, 100,000 men were to be levied, of whom Flanders contributed more than one-third, and the rest in proportion. Raised by means of half-obsolete feudal obligations, or as communal or rural militia, this army, though its numbers were helped out by a system of substitutes, proved inadequate to its purpose; but the fact of its levy not the less shows that the mind of the Netherlands had been made up to resist the French advance.
Meanwhile Mary, still uncertain in which direction to turn for preservation, had sent an embassy to Louis XI, apparently just before her relations with the Flemish towns had been settled. She had little personal advice to depend upon. Her step-mother, the high-spirited Duchess Dowager Margaret, still relied on delusive hopes of English support. Mary’s kinsman, Adolf, Lord zum B^ivenstein and brother of the Duke of Cleves, was both loyal to her and popular with her subjects, but as yet chiefly intent upon securing her hand