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Moreover, at the same moment, she sent orders that a like punishment should be inflicted upon another person then in a Flemish prison, for the crime of anabaptism. The privy council, assisted by thirteen knights of the Fleece, had been hard at work, and the result of their wisdom was at last revealed in a "moderation" consisting of fifty-three articles.

While the general expectation was on the stretch as to whom the fature destines of the provinces would be committed, there appeared on the frontiers of the country the Duchess Margaret of Parma, having been summoned by the king from Italy to assume the government. Margaret was a natural daughter of Charles V. and of a noble Flemish lady named Vangeest, and born in 1522.

'That shows what folk think of Decimus Saxon. Three-and-twenty lives and liberties are in my hands. Ah, lad, invoices and bills of lading are not done up in that fashion. It is not a cargo of Flemish skins that is coming for the old man. The skins have good English hearts in them; ay, and English swords in their fists to strike out for freedom and for conscience.

In June, 1297, Philip the Handsome, in person, laid siege to Lille, and, on the 13th of August, Robert, Count of Artois, at the head of the French chivalry, gained at Furnes, over the Flemish army, a victory which decided the campaign. Lille capitulated.

These noble cross-bow men of the middle ages formed a sort of armed guard to the powers in existence, and almost invariably took the aristocratic, in preference to the democratic side, in the numerous civil dissensions of the Flemish towns. Hence they were protected by the authorities, and easily obtained favourable and sheltered sites for their exercise-ground.

Every fortress on the way was in the hands of enemies; hostile armies were pressing in on every side; the roads were held by foreign troops, French and Poitevin, Flemish mercenaries and Breton rebels as the stricken king rode through the forests and along the trackways he had learned to know as a hunter in earlier days.

After a few weeks passed in Paris, the journey homeward was renewed by way of Antwerp, a city which owes its attraction almost solely to the fact that here are to be seen so many masterpieces of painting. The great influence of Rubens can hardly be appreciated without a visit to the Flemish capital, where he lived and died, and where his ashes rest in the Church of St. Jacques.

The patricians having no profit, took all. Venice being a situation where a man goes but to the door for his employment, the honor is great and the reward very little; but in Holland a councillor of state has £1,500 Flemish a year, besides other accommodations. The States-General have more. And that commonwealth looks nearer her penny than ours needs to do.

It was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on the second page of this book, for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what bourgeois; for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen; for him, a Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish beer-drinkers, and that in public!

No sadder way of entering Italy can well be imagined than landing at Ancona and crossing through the Apennines to Rome in the early spring. To a girl accustomed to the fat flatness of Flanders, to the market-bustle of a Flemish provincial town, this journey must have been overwhelmingly dreary and dismal.