The day after her arrival Margaret received the two most important ladies of Burgundy, the Dowager Duchess Isabelle and the Lady Mary, Charles’ eleven-year-old heiress. The old Dowager would have been reminded of her own arrival from Portugal nearly forty years earlier. Isabelle had endured a much worse journey than Margaret. On the long voyage the fleet had been scattered by storms and some of the ships had taken refuge in English ports. Two of them reached Sluis a full month before the ship bearing Isabelle herself, which arrived on Christmas Day 1429. As the sister of Henry the Navigator, Isabelle was, no doubt, well informed as to the hazards of sea travel, but she still needed to rest for two weeks before her triumphal entry into Bruges.
Throughout her forty years as Duchess, Isabelle played a significant role in Burgundian politics, although in the last years of Philip’s reign she had been in semi-retirement. This was hardly surprising since, by 1468, Isabelle was almost seventy-years-old, but she remained very active, well able to take charge of the marriage negotiations and to receive important diplomatic embassies on behalf of her son. She was clearly pleased that her frequent suggestions for Charles to marry one of the daughters of Richard, Duke of York, had at last been fulfilled.
The first meeting of the Dowager and Margaret was carefully planned.59 Isabelle and Mary arrived with Lord Ravenstein, Charles’ cousin, and Jacques, Count of St Pol, one of the English Queen’s uncles. Margaret met Isabelle at the door of the house and they both knelt to each other for a long time, observing the full solemnity of the court etiquette in which Margaret had been well drilled by the Queen of England. They embraced and ‘stood still in communication for a tract of time’. The Dowager then took Margaret ‘very moderly with grett revrance’ and led her into the house. The ladies dined in private and the Dowager was well pleased with ‘the sight of this lovely lady and pleased with her manners and virtues’.
With the Dowager came the Lady Mary, Charles’ only child and the greatest heiress in western Europe. Her baptism in 1457 had been a splendid affair, ‘the greatest magnificence ever seen for a girl’.60 Louis, then the Dauphin, had been godfather to the child. Most of Mary’s childhood was spent at the castle of Ten Waele in Ghent under the care of the Lady Hallewijn, a cousin of the chronicler Commynes. Anne of Burgundy, who later became the wife of Lord Ravenstein, was responsible for her education, and the little girl was entertained by a private menagerie of monkeys and parrots which were sent to her by her grandmother, the Duchess Isabelle. At Brussels Mary enjoyed the Warende, a great deer park which surrounded the ducal palace, and she grew up with a keen interest in animals, hunting and outdoor sports. Mary’s meeting with her step-mother and her reactions to Margaret were not recorded, but judging by their lasting affection for each other, it seems that Mary was just as delighted with her new step-mother as the Dowager was with her new daughter-in-law.
Although she is rarely described as a beauty, Margaret was a good looking and intelligent young woman. Only Jean de Haynin included a description of the bride in his account of the wedding.61 He noted especially that she was tall ‘like her brother Edward’, and since he was six foot three inches, Margaret may well have been very tall for a woman. Charles on the contrary was below average in height, even shorter than his father. Margaret was slim with a very straight carriage, her face was oval with dark grey eyes and, added de Haynin, she had ‘an air of intelligence and will’. Charles, thirteen years older than his bride, was ‘stout, well grown and well knit with a clear dark complexion and a dark beard and hair’.62 His contemporary sobriquet was le Travaillant for ‘no other ruler worked as hard as he did’. His other soubriquets such as Charles le Téméraire and Charles le Hardie, and in English, Charles the Rash or the Bold were attributions by later chroniclers and historians. They are comments on his fearlessness on the battlefield, and his lack of judgement in a crisis.
Margaret met her future husband for the first time two days after her arrival. There are no reports of any earlier meetings and glimpses, usually so popular among fifteenth century chroniclers. Such tales would have been quite out of character for there was nothing frivolous or informal about the Duke. However on the Monday after her arrival Duke Charles visited Margaret ‘with twenty persons secretly’.63 They exchanged ‘reverent obeissance’ and the Duke then took her in his arms ‘and he kissed her in open sight of all the people of both nations’. Foreigners frequently commented that the English ladies kissed freely and often, but on this occasion Duke Charles impressed even the English commentators. Each time he visited her while she was in Sluis, he repeated the process and he also kissed all the other noble ladies and gentlewomen present. Their formal betrothal took place in the garden of the house of van Baenst. There was presumably no room in the house large enough to have contained all the company who had to witness this important event. The Duke stated his intention to marry ‘this noble lady’ and Margaret declared that she ‘had come for this cause and for no other’. Their hands were joined by the Bishop of Salisbury, attended by the Bishops of Tournai and Utrecht, and Margaret was then acclaimed as the Duchess of Burgundy.64
The new Duchess remained in Sluis until the following Saturday and throughout her stay, there were firework displays, ‘castles of fire’, pageants and music. Isabelle, Mary and Charles made several more visits and Lord Scales and the Bishop of Salisbury made at least one visit to the castle at Bruges to meet the ducal staff. Time was needed for the transfer of the dowry and the final wedding preparations. The first instalment of the dowry was handed over to Charles’ four receivers at Bruges on the morning of the marriage day. Chief of the receivers was Tommaso Portinari, who had also raised 41,000 crowns to cover the Duke’s own expenses for the wedding.65 The delay also gave time for Lancastrian exiles, the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset and their followers (who were ducal pensioners) to leave Bruges. They moved out on the day before Margaret’s own entry into the city.66
A week after her arrival at Sluis, the Duchess was taken by barge up the river to Damme, the outport of Bruges.67 Damme, like Bruges, had passed its peak as a trading port. The river was gradually silting up, and already the larger ships had to unload their cargoes at Sluis. But the quays were still busy with luxury goods for Bruges, and the town had some very large merchant houses including the house of Eustace Weyts, the ducal steward, which had been prepared for Margaret’s visit, and was where the Dowager Isabelle waited to welcome her. At Damme there were more gifts and presentations, and the citizens gave her a rich cope for her chapel. Once more she processed through carpeted streets and was entertained by tableaux vivants, and the evening was passed with more fireworks and pageants.
The next morning, between five and six o’clock, Charles arrived at Damme, and they were married in a private ceremony in a room in the house of Weyts, though tradition has it that they were married in the Church of Our Lady, where they attended high mass afterwards. Immediately after mass, the Duke left for Bruges, leaving for his new Duchess the full honours of a Joyeuse Entrée into the city. This was the ceremonial entry accorded by all the cities and provinces of the Low Countries to their new rulers, and there was a considerable rivalry among the cities to entertain and impress. On this occasion the corporation of Bruges and the ducal household had excelled themselves in preparing a stupendous reception for the English Princess, and Margaret and her entourage were equally magnificently arrayed.68
The bride arrived at the gates of Bruges in a gilded litter draped with crimson cloth of gold and drawn by richly caparisoned, matching white horses. She wore a gown of white cloth of gold, trimmed with white ermine and a cloak of crimson. On her head was a golden coronet and her hair was worn loose but ‘honnourablement’ wrote de La Marche, since it was normally considered very improper for a lady to show her hair in public. All the English lords, the great lords of Burgundy including the Knights of the Golden Fleece, and the heralds and kings of arms escorted her. Trumpeters, clarion and tambourine players and minstrels walked beside the bridal litter and alongside thos
e carrying the other English ladies such as the Duchess of Norfolk. Archers and armed knights escorted the whole procession.
The new Duchess was met at the gate of the Holy Cross by four more processions, which welcomed her into the city and led her through the streets to the ducal palace. First came the procession of the city of Bruges itself, the Mayor, the city magistrates and burghers, all in sober black damask and followed by more musicians, minstrels and pages. They presented Margaret with a gold vase filled with gold pieces and with an enamelled statue of St Margaret as well as the traditional gifts of candles and wine. The second procession represented the Burgundian Church, and included ‘eight score Bishops and Abbots’. Six fine processional crosses soared over this entourage, and the procession probably included the Papal Legate, Onofric, who had been invited to the Low Countries earlier that year by Charles to help him to settle his long-standing dispute with the city of Liège.
The third and most magnificent procession was that of the merchants. There were so many of them and they were so colourful that the commentators became confused. An English writer identified seven groups apart from the English: Florentines, Venetians, Genoese, Luccans, Esterlings (Hansards), Spanish and Scots, adding that ‘all were on horseback saving the Scots which were all on foot’. Waurin, however, found only four groups: the Florentines, Lombards (who may have included the Genoese and the Luccans), Hansards and Spanish. De Haynin thought there were Genoese present but admitted that he was not sure and thought that they might have been English. La Marche, writing much later, seems to have simply collected all the earlier lists together and made a synthesis of them. The Florentines were certainly present, at least a hundred of them, dressed in the Florentine colours of red and green and led by the Medici agent, Tommaso Portinari. They gave Margaret four white coursers, harnessed and saddled in blue and white. There were at least two other groups of Italian merchants demonstrating their continuing dominance of the trade of northern Europe.
All the merchants were magnificent advertisements for their fine draperies, clad in silks, brocades, damasks and velvets, plain, figured and embroidered. The well-mounted English merchants wore violet livery. William Caxton, the Dean of the Merchant Adventurers at Bruges, and soon to become Margaret’s financial adviser, translator and printer probably headed this group. The Spanish and Portuguese wore liveries of crimson, violet and black. There were at least 500 merchants present, and they were all accompanied by their own retinues of pages, musicians and singers.
The last procession to join in was the delegation from the ducal household. Olivier de La Marche had his place here along with all the chamberlains, councillors, gentlemen of the court and ducal servants, all dressed in the Burgundian court liveries of purple and crimson and black.
The whole cortège, now numbering about 1,500, wound its way through the streets of Bruges, which were decked with carpets and hung with banners and tapestries. The windows were garlanded with flowers and crammed with spectators, who had paid up to a crown for a seat to watch the processional entry into the city. All the way from the city gate to the palace there was a series of pageants, ‘the best I ever saw’ wrote John Paston, and ‘marvellously well done’ added another. And so they should have been, since more than seventy-five talented artists from all over the Low Countries were employed to prepare these and all the other decorations and displays for the ducal palace, for the banquets and for the tournament.
The themes of the ten pageants were mostly biblical: as well as Esther and Ahasuerus there were Adam and Eve, the Song of Solomon, the Psalms, Tobias and the Angel, the marriage of Moses and Thorbis and the marriage at Cana. Classical confusions included the marriage of Alexander and Cleopatra and feats of Hercules. The arms of England and Burgundy were displayed everywhere: the lion, the lily and the leopard and the devices ‘Je l’ay emprins’, (‘I have undertaken it’) for the Duke and ‘bien en aviengne’ (‘may good ensue’) which had been chosen for the Duchess.
The whole of the decorations had been arranged by a committee headed by Olivier de La Marche and Jacques de Villiers, the ducal cup-bearer. La Marche had a considerable reputation for this type of work. He had first attracted attention by his spirited performance as a young girl at the great feast of the Pheasant at Lille in 1454. By 1468 he was considered to be the impresario for great court occasions. Under him he had a huge team of artists and officials. Craftsmen were brought in from all over the duchy. The Bruges team was headed by the artist Jacques Daret, who had also worked on the Pheasant banquet. He had years of experience preparing displays for the meetings of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The highest paid was Daniel de Rijke who, with the most famous painter present, Hugo van der Goes, had arrived with the team from Ghent. There were other groups from Antwerp, Ypres, Brussels and Tournai including painters, sculptors, carvers in wax, fine leather workers and jewelsmiths. Mechanical devices were displayed at the palace and during the banquets and these were masterpieces of ingenuity. They included a forty-one foot tower inhabited by monkeys, wolves and bears which danced. Huizinga loftily condemned these entertainments as ‘incredibly bad taste’69 but they certainly provided ducal patronage for a wide range of craftsmen and artists.
Margaret’s arrival in Bruges was so splendid that it has passed into folklore and is still re-enacted for tourists today, but in none of its re-enactments does it achieve anything approaching its original ostentatious pomp. However, the original procession was marred by one factor upon which all the commentators were agreed. It poured with rain all day. Storm clouds and heavy showers blew into Bruges from the North Sea. An English chronicler, more honest than some and doubtless with some patriotic satisfaction that such things happened abroad, wrote ‘than the storme of the rayne came soo faste, I might nott wryght the certyne of the p’sentacions’.70 Regardless of the weather, the procession wound its way solemnly through the streets.
In spite of the rain, Bruges provided one of the most elegant settings possible for such a royal reception. There were according to Rozmital:
many canals in the town and some 525 bridges over them. At least it is so reported, but I did not count all of them. It is also the custom in Flanders for noblemen and well born persons to live in the towns where there are many diversions and delights.
It was ‘a large and beautiful city rich in merchandise’ where the great merchants resided in ‘princely houses in which are many vaulted rooms’.71
In 1468 Bruges was still the greatest cloth market, commercial exchange and banking centre north of the Alps. The proud splendour of the merchant delegations which greeted Margaret on that wet July day showed the pre-eminence of business and trade in the city, which was a centre for all sorts of manufactories. Armourers, leatherworkers, goldsmiths, jewellers and bookmakers all had their workshops in Bruges. Hans Memlinc and Petrus Christus were among the many famous artists working in the city. Their studios continued the vigorous tradition of great Flemish art which had reached a peak with Jan and Hubert van Eyck in the 1440s. Since it was one of the principal ducal residences, the surrounding countryside was full of the castles and hunting grounds of wealthy Flemish and Burgundian nobility. As a centre of the court it was famous throughout Europe for its high standard of living, elegant style and fine taste.
Escorted by this great procession and led by the Lords Scales and Ravenstein, Margaret reached the ducal palace entering through a decorated gateway, where red and white wine flowed freely from the bows of sculpted archers.72 In the courtyard, sweet ippocras, a mixture of honey and mead, spurted from the breast of a golden pelican, perched on an artificial tree. Inside the castle Margaret attended a private mass and rested until dinner. Her rooms had been specially painted with marguerites and hung with tapestries.
The Bruges palace had been built and rebuilt many times during the four hundred years that it had been in use, first by the Counts of Flanders and later by the Dukes of Burgundy. For the Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which had assembled there in May, a large
wooden hall had been erected in the courtyard and this was refurbished for the wedding. Parts of it were made in Brussels and brought by water to Bruges. It was a large construction, 140 feet long and 70 feet wide and it included two upper galleries, turrets and glass windows with gilded shutters.
This was the golden age of gothic tapestries and for the wedding ceremonies the magnificent Gideon and Clovis tapestries gleamed on the walls. Above the dais there were dazzling verdure tapestries displaying the arms of Burgundy and within the palace thirty-two rooms were decorated with more sets of tapestries. Made chiefly in Tournai, these great hangings were among the most treasured possessions of the Burgundian Dukes. They were woven of silk and wool, with gold and silver threads and were incredibly costly. One set alone might cost the equivalent of the total annual income of a noble landowner,73 so that apart from kings and great dukes, few noblemen owned more than two or three pieces. The Burgundian collection was the richest in Europe as can be seen from the fragments which still survive scattered in art galleries and museums all over the world. In July 1468 the entire collection was concentrated at Bruges, a symbol of almost fabulous wealth and a magical experience for those fortunate enough to walk through the candlelit rooms of the palace.
For the banquets, the roof of the wooden hall had been draped in blue and white and the high table was splendid in purple, black and gold. Illumination was by an elaborate system of candelabra and mirrors, arranged by the lighting expert Jean Scalkin. The ducal plate of gold, silver and copper dishes shone on elevated cupboards made specially for this occasion and decorated with pinnacles, each of them crowned with a ‘unicorn’s horn’. No wonder Edward Hall doubted the veracity of these reports. The Duchess dined in state with the Dowager and Mary, attended by all the most important members of the English entourage and of the Burgundian court. The remaining ladies were served in one of the galleries and musicians played in the other.
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 4