Philip gave Margaret’s interests every consideration. In 1495 she exchanged her property at Le Quesnoy for the town of Rupelmonde at the junction of the rivers Scheldt and Rupel, with all its valuable tolls and customs duties.2 The 300 livres shortfall in her annual revenue that resulted from the exchange was made up from the revenues of Dendermonde and Oudenaarde, and Philip agreed to bear half the expenses for the repair of the castle and the mill at Rupelmonde. Le Quesnoy was situated two days journey south of Mons and had been constantly in the front line of French invasions. Although by the time of this transfer the various Franco-Burgundian treaties had restored Margaret to the full possession of all her dower, Le Quesnoy was a difficult and expensive property for a dowager to hold. Apart from its strategic position, Le Quesnoy lay within the vast hunting forest of Mormail and that fact may also have inspired the transfer to Philip. The ageing Duchess no longer had such a need for this type of estate.
Margaret bore a heavy load of responsibility for the maintenance and administration of all her dower property. Many documents survive in the archives of Brussels, Malines and Lille that bear witness to her assiduity. Apart from raising troops to defend her possessions, a serious matter in the years of invasions and rebellions, Margaret had full responsibility for upholding law and order, collecting aides and taxes and maintaining all the property of the demesne such as castles, palaces and mills. In the wet lands of the valleys of the Scheldt and the Lys it was also the duty of the landowner to preserve the vast network of ditches and dykes.
Margaret was jealous of her authority and would never permit its erosion. This is made clear from her arguments with the magistrates of Malines over elections and with the Bishop of Cambrai over a case of sanctuary.3 Even Malines, her favoured dower town found that she was zealous in preserving her privileges. In 1495 she was not pleased with the results of the election for the magistrates. Claiming the same rights which she possessed in her other dower towns, Margaret demanded that all the names of the magistrates should be submitted for her approval. The corporation of Malines resisted her orders, declaring that this was an infringement of their ancient liberties, which the Dowager had herself confirmed in 1477 and 1485. Margaret then turned to Philip and persuaded him to declare the election null and void but this was not to be the end of the story. The magistrates persisted in their claims, and they too appealed for ducal justice. And so the legal argument continued. Unfortunately the final outcome is unknown, but it is very clear that she was resolved to maintain her authority. In spite of this legal wrangle, the relations between Malines and their Dowager remained very good indeed.
Ardent in the protection of her rights and privileges, Margaret was not averse to making an appeal to the ducal government if it suited her purpose. Nor was she immune from the general addiction of the age to pursue lengthy and often fruitless litigation. One long drawn out affair concerned the lands of Buggenhout which were given to Margaret when its former owner defected to France.4 But her right to these manors was challenged by Charles de Hallewijn, a close relative of Mary’s lady-in-waiting. Margaret’s lawyer, William Stadio, pursued the case for several years but found all his efforts blocked and after Margaret’s death, Charles de Hallewijn ultimately gained the title to the property.
Apart from the legal tussle with Malines and about Buggenhout, the Dowager took another long-standing case before Archduke Philip in September 1496. Six defendants had all been found guilty of certain illegalities in the drapery business, but they had failed to pay their fines to Margaret. Philip found in her favour and this time she seems to have obtained satisfaction. However although she was willing to pursue some cases in the courts she was not over zealous. She was prepared to concede some of her traditional judicial rights to the archducal courts and she surrendered to the high court all responsibility for the sale of the criminal’s confiscated goods in cases of homicide.5
If Margaret relied on Philip’s support in judicial matters, she was entirely independent in the administration and management of her dower lands and she appointed her own officials. She selected men of good family and character to head her administration and she was loyal to those who had served her husband well. To be in the Dowager’s service provided a good opportunity for ambitious young men who sought to catch the attention of the Archduke. Henri de Witthem, Lord of Beersel and Henri de Hammericourt, Lord of Villerzies, both began their careers in the Dowager’s service, the former as her Lord Lieutenant at Malines and the latter at Binche.6 They eventually became important councillors to Philip and after his death they served under the Regent Margaret and later under Emperor Charles V. Henri of Witthem became Charles’ strong right arm in the Brussels area, a position which earned him great notoriety in 1532 when he was sent into Brussels to crush an urban revolt. His brutality was so appalling that the citizens rose up, marched on the castle of Beersel and destroyed it. Another who achieved high office through the service of the Dowager was Gerard of Assendelft. The son of an important Dutch family with a large house in The Hague (now the British embassy), he was chosen to take the feudal oaths for her dower lands at Brielle and Voorne. By the reign of Charles V, Assendelft controlled the mint at The Hague and was one of the most important ducal administrators in the whole of Holland and Zeeland.
Margaret kept a close eye on the officials and nobles who performed duties on her behalf. All her officials were expected to report regularly and punctually to their mistress. Most of her correspondence was conducted through secretaries but there are several peremptory notes from the Dowager herself. Her agent at Dendermonde was Olivier van Royan and he received many instructions from her.7 In December 1482, at the height of the crisis over the treaty of Arras, she wrote to van Royan telling him to meet her at Antwerp on the following Monday to discuss the maintenance of two windmills on her estates there. In her own hand and in her peculiarly eccentric French, Margaret added ‘non fayllye poynt de estre a Anvers et Jacques ausy’ (don’t fail to be at Antwerp and Jacques too).
Another of her servants, one Ghysbrecht Dullaert, was summoned to meet her at Oudenaarde and he had to be there no later than ‘the end of this week’. One of her favourite phrases in her letters to her civil servants was ‘toutes excusacions cessans’ (with no more excuses). It seemed that she understood the bureaucratic mind very well indeed and she was resolved to get immediate action. Good service was well rewarded and Margaret showed a maternal care for her employees. In 1488, Corneille de Berghes received a horse for his special services to ‘her very dear and well beloved son’ (i.e. Maximilian) and when Jean Lebrun the miller at Binche lost all his goods and his children in the troubles of 1487, Margaret ordered that he should receive compensation and reduced his taxes accordingly.8 She made similar sympathetic reductions for the people of Hainault at the time of the great dearth in 1480 and for the people of Brielle and Voorne after the floods of 1485.9
As a result of her careful supervision her revenues were collected smoothly and regularly. The officials gathered in her rents, levied all the usual feudal dues on the transfer of property, on the sales of livestock, timber, food, cloth, and coals and collected the customs and duties on imported goods. Many officials received their salaries directly from her dower towns. Guillaume de Baume supplemented his income with an annuity of 1,000 livres from Malines and the same city also paid the salaries of the caretakers of her palace.10 No doubt Malines viewed these payments as a small price to pay for all the benefits that accrued to the city as a result of Margaret’s residence. Apart from their trading privileges with England, Malines received special favours from both Philip and Maximilian. From 1489 to about 1530, when it was transferred to Brussels, Malines was the centre of the imperial postal system set up to serve the needs of first Maximilian and later Philip the Fair and Charles V.11 This alone brought plenty of work and wealth to the hostelries and stables of the town.
At Binche where Margaret spent much of her last few years, she owned two houses, the hotel of the old Abbey of Lobbe and the Hô
tel de la Salle.12 She may have only used the former during the major rebuilding of the latter, which went on for several years and cost between 2 to 3,000 crowns. The Hôtel de la Salle was on the site of the old castle (now the town hall). A range of buildings were reconstructed by the Dowager, including a new tower, a chapel, a great hall and reception rooms with galleries along the garden side. The new hall was of a considerable size, more than 10 metres wide and 22 metres long and the Dowager used it as the focal point for all her administration in Hainault. She made other improvements at the Hôtel of Bavaria at Mons which she visited on a regular basis. The city gave her enthusiastic support and provided all the bricks and mortar required.13 In her activities at Mons and Binche the Dowager was asserting her presence in Hainault, which, after 1477, had become one of the most southerly possessions of the duchy. Margaret was zealous in the defence of her property in Hainault and her continued presence there showed her strong political commitment to the province.
Even after 1496, when Philip had taken over the full reins of government, the Dowager was never entirely free from the affairs of state. She never shunned the court or avoided political involvement. Unlike her mother-in-law, Isabelle of Portugal, Margaret did not retire, although in the last two or three years of her life ill health seems to have forced her to be less active. Whenever there was a great court occasion Margaret attended. Indeed her continued energetic involvement in all that life had to offer is one of her more attractive and consistent characteristics.
When Philip came of age Margaret was forty-eight years old, a good age for a woman in the fifteenth century. Of course being a noblewoman, she had avoided the miseries of famine and malnutrition which affected much of the population. Due to her seclusion and to the careful regimens of her doctors, she also escaped the epidemics of plague which scourged the Low Countries in 1472 and again in 1497-8. She had been spared the dangers of childbearing and the violent deaths which had carried off most of her male relatives. Only one of her brothers, Edward IV, had died in his bed and then at the relatively early age of forty-one. Of her other three brothers, Edmund was killed at seventeen, Clarence at twenty-eight and Richard III at thirty-two. Her father, killed at forty-nine and her husband at forty-four were positively old in comparison with these three sons of York. Of Margaret’s two sisters, Anne died at thirty-seven and Elizabeth at fifty-nine or sixty. None of them survived as long as their mother Cecily, who lived to be eighty. Indeed Cecily’s strong constitution seems to have been unique in the House of York. It was perhaps one of her Beaufort characteristics.
In 1494, Margaret had less than a decade to live, and there were increasing signs of ill health. When she was at Binche in May of 1497, anxious enquiries arrived from her subjects at Malines. In her reply she thanked them for their ‘bonne visitacion’ (kind delegation) and admitted that during the last six weeks she had had two ‘accidens de maladie’ (outbreaks of sickness).14 However she was able to reassure them that through the good services of her doctors Cornille and Lambert, she had finally thrown off the heavy fever which had afflicted her up to that very day and she was now very much recovered. After this illness, although Margaret was by no means infirm, she no longer travelled as often as she had done in the past. She spent most of her last years at Malines and Binche with very occasional visits to Brussels, Mons, Oudenaarde, Louvain and Ter Elst.15
The Dowager continued to be, due to the long absences of Margaret of Austria and the frequent illnesses of the new Archduchess Joanna, the most important lady of the court. It was she who welcomed the distinguished visitors to the Low Countries. With her experience spanning the reigns of Charles and Mary in Burgundy, two Kings of France and no less than five Kings of England, some of her guests must have regarded the Dowager as a piece of living history. An audience with Margaret was regarded as a great honour and she seems to have been delighted to represent the ducal family whenever the need arose.
Even in the last year of her life, when she was already very sick, she entertained Maximilian when he visited Malines. Earlier, in September 1494, when Maximilian’s second wife Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, came on her only visit to the north, she too was received by Margaret, both at Brussels and at Malines. The Empress was entertained most royally and Margaret did not fail to exploit her visit to serve her own political ambitions. When Philip entered Louvain for his Joyeuse Entrée, he was accompanied by two important guests, the Empress Bianca and Richard of York.16 It was her influence at the ducal court and her access to all the important visitors to the Low Countries that made Margaret’s support of the Pretender such a threat to the security of Henry Tudor.
After 1494, the Emperor Maximilian rarely visited the Low Countries, spending most of the rest of his life in Germany.17 However it is clear from the ‘Weisskünig’ that his years in the north had had a great impact on him. He remarried but he had no more legitimate children and, though he was to live to the age of sixty, a serious attack of syphilis in 1493 had a lasting effect on his health. When he had arrived at Ghent in 1477, he was only eighteen years old and during the next seventeen years he had been at the centre of Burgundian affairs. In this hard school he received a thorough political and military education, proving himself to be much more realistic as a general than his predecessor, Duke Charles, had been.
As a politician operating within the maelstrom of the Low Countries, Maximilian always suffered from the handicap of his foreign origin. Margaret understood this handicap very well. The Chronicle of Flanders recorded her frustrations on this score when she was forced to withdraw from Ghent in 1477.18 Her support of Maximilian was therefore both loyal and sympathetic. He claimed that he had learned from her to listen carefully to all the requests that were made of him. Maximilian always showed Margaret the greatest respect and consideration and on all his later visits he either visited Margaret at Malines or she came there to meet him. Her influence on his policies towards England had a long lasting effect and his continued support of the House of York seems to have been as much a matter of personal honour as it was of diplomatic value. His loyalty to Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, and his brother Richard de la Pole must have pleased Margaret, who could no longer support her nephews herself.
It is not difficult to discern Margaret’s influence over the younger Archduke Philip. In character, Philip the Fair seems to have been like his great-grandfather Philip the Good, preferring to avoid political conflicts and enjoying the pleasures of life, particularly women and hunting. He was very much the antithesis of his grandfather Charles, being fair-skinned, fair-haired, lively and frivolous. However, his brief rule was in many ways much more successful. His government was realistic in its foreign policy, placating France and reaching a practical trading agreement with England. It was also tactful in its domestic administration which operated smoothly under the ducal councillors.
Most of the men who served Philip were selected by Margaret. Philip’s tutor Francis van Buysleyden became the Bishop of Besançon and the Lord of Gistel. The former Mayor of Malines, who had trained the young Archduke in the military arts, was made the Governor of Dendermonde.19 Others like Olivier de La Marche remained in their old positions in the ducal household. Even when Philip decided to replace the Chancellor Carondelet with a man of his own choosing, he selected Thomas Plaines, a man well-known to the Dowager from his participation in her embassy to England in 1480. Although Margaret was disappointed by Philip’s failure to support her Yorkist nephews, she would have been well pleased to see her own pragmatic and conciliatory methods applied to the government of the duchy.
Neither Margaret nor any of the ducal advisers could have anticipated the disastrous consequences of the great double marriage which took place at the Church of St Gudule in Brussels in December 1495.20 At these proxy weddings, Philip married the Infanta Joanna of Castile and Margaret of Austria was married to Don Juan, the heir to the thrones of Spain. This proud and splendid occasion was to have a dismal outcome both from personal and political po
ints of view. Joanna had a difficult and unstable personality and, especially after the birth of her third child, she suffered from manic depression. Her brother, Don Juan, was to die within two years of the marriage, with the result that Philip the Fair became heir to the Kingdoms of Spain. The Habsburg possession of Spain, the Empire and the Low Countries, which was the vast inheritance of Philip and Joanna’s son, the Emperor Charles V, would bring war and conflict to the Low Countries throughout much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Ignorance of the future is one of the consolations of the present and this gloomy destiny was quite unknown when the Infanta Joanna arrived in the Low Countries in September 1496. Both the Dowager and Margaret of Austria went up to Antwerp to meet the new Archduchess. They travelled with a glittering retinue drawn from the Knights of the Golden Fleece. The Infanta arrived with a vast armada of one hundred and twenty ships. Some of these were to provide the escort for Margaret of Austria when she left for Spain early in the following year. Unfortunately Joanna was ill after the long voyage and she had to be taken to the Abbey of St Michael at Bergen op Zoom, so it was there that the two Margarets first visited her. By 20 October, Joanna was sufficiently recovered for the marriage ceremonies to take place at the Church of St Gommaire in Lier.21
The Dowager had already made several visits to the shrine of St Gommaire, one in 1475 to see the relics of the saint and another for the annual procession of the saint in October 1477. On her first visit the canons had presented her with an illuminated life of St Gommaire and she had given the church two fine silver candlesticks. The wedding of Joanna and Philip was celebrated with banquets and a tournament, no doubt organised by Olivier de La Marche, but, although with the accession of Philip the duchy seemed to have been restored to much of its old equilibrium, the old opulent ceremonies of earlier times were not repeated.
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 27