A FINANCIAL REVOLUTION IN FLANDERS?
PUBLIC DEBT, REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS, AND POLITICAL
CENTRALISATION IN THE COUNTY OF FLANDERS DURING THE 1480S1
Jelle Haemers
University of Leuven
Historians have engaged in a long and interesting debate about whether the fiscal innovations of
early modern states can truly be considered a ‘financial revolution’. Instead of a simple resolution,
the issue has become more complex, particularly since some historians have used the term
‘revolution’ to characterise the introduction of new taxes to finance public debt in seventeenthcentury England and sixteenth-century Holland. Peter Dickson and James Tracy have argued that the
use of new financial techniques and the emergence of a collective responsibility for debts were
responsible for a marked increase in the creditworthiness of the governments in those countries. The
revolution, as they see it, was characterized by a dramatic increase in public borrowing, coupled with
a shift from short-term to long-term debt in the form of low-rate securities guaranteed by the
representative bodies of the governments and funded by forecasts of future revenues.2 Holland’s
fiscal system transformed radically after the Estates of the county agreed to levy regional taxes rather
than urban excises to fund the sale of regional renten (annuities) for the central government in place
of the older urban renten. This decision meant that short-term obligations at high interest rates could
be converted into a long-term debt at lower rates. Another innovation was to pledge future tax
revenues as a security for public debt, made possible in Holland in 1542 by the introduction of
regional excise taxes, the so-called “nieuwe middelen”. By the end of the sixteenth century, the
significant increase in tax revenue which resulted from these measures produced huge sums of
money which could be invested in new loans. Some historians have even deemed this a ‘tax
revolution’.3 As a result, the Habsburg Empire had the financial means to invest in activities that
reinforced state power, such as patronage, establishment and expansion of central institutions and
construction of defenses for the empire. In England during the seventeenth century, a similar shift in
the organisation of public debt enabled the country to wage expensive wars against economic and
political rivals. Fiscal and financial innovations thus helped states grow.
While Dickson and Tracy thought that the fiscal measures taken by the Estates of Holland
and the English Parliament were previously unknown innovations, others have shown that late
medieval governments had already employed similar strategies to finance their policies. John Munro
demonstrated that medieval princes could utilize long-term ‘national’ debts, consisting largely of
perpetual annuities. Annual payments on these annuities and periodic redemptions were often
authorized by parliamentary or legislative assemblies – albeit on a smaller scale than in early modern
times – which committed to funding that debt by levying specific taxes, usually on consumption.
During the Middle Ages, sales of these annuities took place in Italy, the Low Countries, and certain
regions of France without any coercion by the state, just as in early modern Holland and England.
Instead, citizens had complete confidence that the government would fulfil its obligation to make the
1
I like to thank Shennan Hutton for correcting my English. This paper was also presented at a conference in The Hague
(14 September 2012), organized by Mario Damen (University of Amsterdam). I am grateful to him and the participators
of this conference, and those of the conference in Groningen for their comments on an earlier version of this text.
2
P. DICKSON, The Financial revolution in England: A Study in the development of public credit, 1688-1756, Oxford,
1967; J.D. TRACY, A Financial revolution in the Habsburg Netherland: Renten and renteniers in the county of Holland,
1515-1565, Berkeley, 1985.
3
W. FRITSCHY, “A ‘Financial revolution’ reconsidered. Public finance in Holland during the Dutch Revolt, 1568-1648”,
in Economic History Review, 56, 2003, p. 57-89; N. MADDENS, “De invoering van de ‘Nieuwe Middelen’ in het
graafschap Vlaanderen tijdens de regering van Keizer Karel”, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 57, 1979, p.
342-363 and 861-898.
stipulated annuity payments on the promised dates.4 As Jaco Zuijderduijn has shown, the towns of
Holland made full use of collective responsibility for debt, as well as other financial techniques
characteristic of the financial revolution, in the late Middle Ages.5 As a result, he called into question
Tracy’s assertion that the county-wide sale of annuities in Holland in the 1540s constituted “the first
time in European history that future revenues of whole provinces could be mobilized for present
needs through the mechanism of credit”.6 This article will contest Zuijderduijn’s claim that Holland
was the only late medieval state in which towns turned ‘collective responsibility’ into a system of
province-wide public debt, because Flanders utilized the same strategy in the 1480s. Nevertheless, I
agree with Zuijderduijn’s argument that collective responsibility was usually created only in
emergency situations, when traditional financial techniques (namely public debt contracted by
individual towns) no longer sufficed to meet the government’s increased demands for funding. In
Zuijderduijn’s late-fifteenth-century Holland, and in Flanders in the same period, as this article will
show, serious financial crisis lead representative institutions to reconstitute the system of public debt
on a wider scale.7 These changes caused the organisation of public debt to evolve into a new form. In
short, analysis of the medieval origins of the financial revolution shows that ‘financial evolution’ is a
more accurate characterisation than ‘revolution’, because the innovations developed from preexisting practices and ideas.
Historians have also probed the financial implications and economic consequences of fiscal
innovation, which they view as a stimulus for economic evolution. However, their studies largely
ignore the political aspects of financial innovation. Clearly, the ‘financial evolution’ had important
economic, financial, and fiscal consequences. The fact that annuities were freely negotiable through
financial intermediaries in secondary markets offered investors in public debt more prospect of
gaining wealth through speculation. Oscar Gelderblom and Joost Jonker stressed that the
negotiability of these financial instruments greatly increased the liquidity of private investors and
government bonds, while others have examined the influence of the sale of public debts on both the
public and private sectors.8 But the prime mover behind the increase in scale of annuity sales in the
fifteenth century, the political goals which compelled representative institutions to contract long-term
debts, either alone or together with higher authorities, have yet to be the focus of analysis. The
political motives behind the new policies for the creation and repayment of public debts, and the
political consequences of their introduction, have been eclipsed by the – admittedly important –
economic and financial consequences of fiscal evolution. In my view, these historians also do not
satisfactorily explain why representative institutions (such as the Holland Estates or the English
J. MUNRO, “The Medieval origins of the financial revolution: usury, rentes, and negotiability”, in The International
History Review, 25, 2003, p. 505-576; M. BOONE, “Stratégies fiscales et financières des élites urbaines et de l’État
bourguignon naissant dans l’ancien comté de Flandre (XIVe-XVIe siècles)”, in L’argent au Moyen Âge, Paris, 1998, p.
235-253; M. FRATIANNI & F. SPINELLI, “Italian city-states and financial evolution”, in European Review of Economic
History, 10, 2006, p. 257-278.
5
J. ZUIJDERDUIJN, “The emergence of provincial debt in the county of Holland (thirteenth-sixteenth centuries)”, in
European Review of Economic History, 14, 2010, p. 335-359; C.J. ZUIJDERDUIJN, Medieval capital markets: Markets for
‘renten’, state formation and private investment in Holland (1300-1550), Leiden, 2009. See also M. ’T HART, “De
democratische paradox en de Opstand in Vlaanderen, Brabant en Holland”, in Bourgondië voorbij. Opstellen
aangeboden aan Wim Blockmans, ed. M. DAMEN & L. SICKING, Hilversum, 2010, p. 323-335.
6
TRACY, A Financial revolution, p. 221.
7
J. ZUIJDERDUIJN, “De laatmiddeleeuwse crisis van de overheidsfinanciën en de financiële revolutie in Holland”, in
Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 125, 2010, pp. 3-24. Also in Spanish and
Italian regions, similar solutions to financial crises were adopted (A. CALABRIA, The Cost of empire: The finances of the
kingdom of Naples in the time of the Spanish rule, Cambridge, 1991; M. MARTINEZ, “Dette publique dans les pays de la
couronne d’Aragon (14e-15e siècles)”, in Urban public debts. Urban government and the market for annuities in
Western Europe (14th-18th centuries), ed. M. BOONE, K. DAVIDS & P. JANSSENS, Turnhout, 2003, p. 27-50.
8
O. GELDERBLOM & J. JONKER, “Completing a financial revolution: The finance of the Dutch East India trade and the
rise of the Amsterdam capital market, 1595-1612”, in Journal of Economic History, 64, 2004, p. 641-672; J.L. VAN
ZANDEN, J. ZUIJDERDUIJN & T. DE MOOR, “Small is beautiful: The efficiency of credit markets in the late medieval
Holland”, in European Review of Economic History, 16, 2012, p. 3-22.
4
Parliament) decided or consented to centralise the public debt. It seems paradoxical to think that
political representatives of the state’s subjects, who normally tried to diminish the concentration of
political power by courts and central institutions, wholeheartedly collaborated with the state elite to
increase political centralisation.
The purpose of this article is to try to determine why representative institutions decided to
change existing methods of funding government finances. It delves into one case which gives unique
insight into the political motives of the representatives who enacted these fiscal measures which have
been called revolutionary by some historians. In the county of Flanders, in 1485 and again in 1488,
the Estates decided to finance a costly war with long-term loans through the sale of annuities – just
as the Estates of Holland would do again in the sixteenth century. While James Tracy argued that
Charles V’s need for cash to finance the wars he waged as an ‘impresario’ was the prime mover
behind financial innovation, Jaco Zuijderduijn considered the government’s financial crisis to be the
main reason why representative institutions in fifteenth-century Holland agreed to the sale of
provincial annuities.9 As this article will show, the need for cash and the related problem of financial
crisis also motivated provincial delegates in fifteenth-century Flanders to centralise the public debt,
but this explanation denies the agency of representative institutions, a crucial factor. In Flanders,
leading members of the Estates consciously opted for public debt centralisation to increase their
control over central institutions. By creating a sophisticated system of government funding, they
intended to improve the functioning of the central state, albeit with certain conditions. The Estates
held that government expenditure should further the interests of the subjects, and the meeting of the
Estates, as representatives of the subjects, should approve any new fiscal measures initiated to pay
for long-term loans. Therefore, the financial innovations of the 1480s in Flanders were inspired by
the fundamental desire to enlarge the political control of representative institutions over the central
government.
Historians who have studied fiscal innovations in seventeenth-century England have shown
that the political consent of the subjects, or at least of their representatives in Parliament, to changes
in the structure of public debt increased the credibility of the state. Douglass North and Barry
Weingast singled out limits to monarchical power as a main cause for the government’s rise in
creditworthiness.10 Representative institutions restrained the ability of government officials to act
opportunistically in the money market. In England, representatives wanted control over state
functionaries in order to diminish the risk-taking of these officials, who often contracted short-term
loans at high interest rates. Similarly in Flanders, the Estates had a long tradition of complaining
about the high costs of loans contracted by the count. Even the officials appointed to government
institutions sometimes warned the count about the dangers of the huge interest payments he would
owe when he borrowed money from merchants. As Bart Lambert and I have shown, this was an
acute problem in the years preceding the decision of the Flemish Estates to centralise the public debt
in the 1480s. We argued that Flemish subjects pressed continually for political checks and balances
on the Flemish count’s financial policy, because they were concerned about the financial health of
the central institutions in their county.11 However, the credibility of a state depended on more than
just the organization of governmental institutions and the extent of political control the subjects
exerted over them. For England, David Stasavage argues that historians have not paid sufficient
attention to the issue of partisan preference when they describe changes in public finance. A full
explanation of the reasons why representative institutions changed the funding of public debt
9
J. TRACY, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of war. Campaign strategy, international finance, and domestic politics.
Cambridge, 2002; ZUIJDERDUIJN, “De laatmiddeleeuwse crisis”, p. 23-24.
10
D. NORTH & B. WEINGAST, “Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutions governing public choice in
seventeenth-century England”, in Journal of Economic History, 49, 1989, p. 803-832. See also H. ROSEVEARE, The
financial revolution, 1660-1760, Harlow, 1991.
11
J. HAEMERS & B. LAMBERT, “Pouvoir et argent. La fiscalité d’État et la consommation du crédit des ducs de
Bourgogne (1384-1506)”, in Revue du Nord, 91, 2009, p. 39-59.
requires analysis of the social interest groups which supported the individuals who controlled the
institutions at the moment of change.12 In addition to confirming Stasavage’s point, this article draws
on the approach of Anne Murphy, who recently wrote that the interests of the public, namely the
people who invested in public debt, must be taken into account in analysis of financial
(r)evolutions.13 Case studies of the Low Countries have also shown that people had political motives
as well as economic and financial reasons (such as private profits) to buy annuities from urban and
central governments.14 As it develops these insights, this article will demonstrate that political
desires ‘from below’ could determine fiscal innovation and political centralisation in a decisive
manner, as it did in Flanders in the 1480s.
War and Renten in Flanders
The uniqueness of the Flemish case lies in its political context. In spring 1483, the Estates of
Flanders, dominated by the elite of its principal cities (Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres) had assumed
control over the county, by installing a regency council to govern the county in name of the Count
Philip the Fair, a minor. Born in 1478, Philip had become a semi-orphan after the unexpected death
of his mother, Mary of Burgundy, in March 1482. Mary had been the only heir of Charles the Bold,
and became countess of Flanders, duchess of Brabant, countess of Holland, etc., in 1477. She had
inherited lands in revolt, as her subjects had used the political vacuum after Charles’ death to rid
themselves of his policies they detested. In 1477, the regions and cities of the Low Countries had
obtained extensive privileges which had restored their rights of political and juridical autonomy,
which they had lost to the Burgundian dukes over the last century. In a striking example of how
much power of the Burgundian dynasty had lost, the Estates of Flanders independently made the
decision to grant money and troops to the court when it asked for subsidies to pursue the war with
France. After 1477, the Estates collectively discussed how they would finance government spending.
The main cities of Flanders, Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, called the ‘Three Members of Flanders’, had a
long tradition of political autonomy, as they each governed a so-called kwartier (the city’s
hinterland). During the reigns of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, however, the Burgundian
dynasty had reduced the political power of the cities, which now used the death of Charles to regain
their political and financial autonomy. It was particularly the cities’ merchant elite, backed by the
craft guilds who enjoyed extensive privileges from the city, who forcefully opposed the autocratic
politics of Charles the Bold in 1477, as they would again later.15
These urban groups launched in new revolt in 1482, after the death of Charles’ daughter
Mary. This decade-long revolt was driven by the same grievances. Before her death, Mary had been
married to Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1477, but the subjects did not consider it a happy
marriage. As a son of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg prince disregarded
urban privileges and political autonomy for the cities. During his wife’s reign, he had ignored the
D. STASAVAGE, “Partisan politics and public debt: The importance of the ‘Whig Supremacy’ for Britain’s financial
revolution”, in European Review of Economic History, 11, 2007, p. 123-153.
13
A. MURPHY, “Demanding ‘credible commitment’: Public reactions to the failures of the early financial revolution”, in
Economic History Review, 65, 2012, p. 1-20.
14
M. BOONE, “‘Plus dueil que joie.’ Renteverkopen door de stad Gent in de Bourgondische periode: tussen private
belangen en publieke financiën”, in Gemeentekrediet van België, driemaandelijks tijdschrift, 45, 1991, p. 3-26; L.
DERYCKE, “The public annuity market in Bruges at the end of the 15 th century”, in Urban public debts, p. 165-181; M.
VAN DER HEIJDEN, Geldschieters van de stad. Financiële relaties tussen stad, burgers en overheden, 1550-1650,
Amsterdam, 2006; J. HANUS, Tussen stad en eigen gewin. Stadsfinanciën, renteniers en kredietmarkten in ’sHertogenbosch (begin zestiende eeuw), Amsterdam, 2007.
15
W. BLOCKMANS (ed.), 1477. Het algemene en de gewestelijke privilegiën van Maria van Bourgondië voor de
Nederlanden, Kortrijk, 1985; J. HAEMERS, For the Common Good. State power and urban revolts in the reign of Mary of
Burgundy, Turnhout, 2009.
12
wishes and complaints of the Estates about his financial policies and other issues. Despite the
protests of the Flemish cities about the expensive loans he had contracted with foreigners, he became
increasingly squeezed by high interest rates which undermined the fiscal independence of the court.16
Maximilian’s debts diverted ever larger portions of the tax revenues and subsidies previously levied
by the Burgundian dynasty to wealthy bankers from Italy and elsewhere, while the Archduke spent
much of the remaining funds on an expensive war with France. Ghent led the protest against
Maximilian, when it refused in 1481 to pay any more subsidies to court. As soon as the Austrian
Archduke ignored the financial complaints of the Estates, his own state officials and financial
advisors, including the Bruges merchant Willem Moreel, left Maximilian. Mary died suddenly in the
middle of the crisis, and with her death Maximilian lost his legitimacy to rule the state. The Estates
of Flanders seized this unexpected opportunity to govern the county through a regency council,
constituted in the spring of 1483.17 Maximilian was not allowed to act as regent for his son. In the
regency council, representatives of the cities were joined by leading noblemen, such as Adolph of
Cleves and Louis of Bruges. Dissatisfied with the administration of Maximilian, whose autocratic
behaviour had ignored their privileges as well, they had joined the opposition.
The regency council monopolized the administration and education of Count Philip from this
moment onward. The council was actually a permanent meeting of the Estates of Flanders, which
followed the count, although he remained in Ghent most of the time. Representatives of the cities of
Ghent, Bruges and Ypres administered the personal court of the young count, appointed state
officials, and controlled the count’s finances. The accounts kept by the leading financial
functionaries of Flanders (such as Jan van der Scaghe, Willem Moreel, Andries Andries, and others)
demonstrate that there was little change in the count’s administration after 1483, beyond resumption
of control by the Estates. In the regency council, the leaders of the Estates established directives for
the count’s financial and fiscal policies, which had been discussed during meetings of representatives
of the main cities. Likewise, in cities like Ghent and Bruges, councils of burghers and delegates of
craft guilds discussed the financial implications of instructions from the central government. The
cities autonomously decided if they would grant subsidies to the court, and they could freely choose
to change the rates of urban excise taxes. Flanders was governed as a federalized state in which the
corporate bodies (such as the cities) had considerable political and financial autonomy. However, the
Members of Flanders did support the existence of a central level of power (the regency council), as
they wanted this institution to insure monetary stability, safety for commerce along the roads, and
military defence of the county. Above all, the regency council was the keystone of the county’s
political organisation, for it guaranteed the domination of the Estates and conservation of the
privileges and autonomy of the Three Members.
Maximilian of Austria naturally contested the new administration of the county and the
education (or – as he called it – the imprisonment) of his son Philip by the council. After Maximilian
had defeated a rebellion in Utrecht and eliminated opposition in Brabant, he directed his attention to
Flanders. Negotiations between members of his court and the regency council broke down in the
summer of 1484. At the end of that year, Archduke Maximilian attacked Flanders from the southeast
with an army led by Philip of Cleves. In January 1485, his forces took Oudenaarde, a city of
moderate size on the Scheldt River, which was a crucial route for provisions into the city of Ghent.18
P. STABEL & J. HAEMERS, “From Bruges to Antwerp. International commercial firms and government’s credit in the
late 15th and early 16th century”, in Banca, crédito y capital. La monarquía Hispánica y los antiguos Países Bajos
(1505-1700), ed. C. SANZ AYÁN & B. GARCÍA GARCÍA, Madrid, 2006, p. 21-37. See also the case-studies of R. DE
ROOVER, The Rise and decline of the Medici bank, 1397-1494, Cambridge, 1963, p. 355-356; M. BOONE, “Apologie d’un
banquier médiéval: Tomasso Portinari et l’État bourguignon”, in Le Moyen Âge, 105, 1999, p. 31-54.
17
W. BLOCKMANS, “Autocratie ou polyarchie? La lutte pour le pouvoir politique en Flandre de 1482 à 1492, d’après des
documents inédits”, in Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, 140, 1974, p. 257-368.
18
Details about this war can be found in studies about the governor of Maximilian’s armies: A. DE FOUW, Philips van
Kleef. Een bijdrage tot de kennis van zijn leven en karakter, Groningen, 1937; J. HAEMERS, “Philippe de Clèves et la
Flandre. La position d’un aristocrate au cœur d’une révolte urbaine (1477-1492)”, in Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’État:
16
In panic, the regency council accepted military support from the French king, Maximilian’s eternal
enemy and sovereign of the county. For several months, French troops were able to keep the main
cities of the county from falling, although Maximilian’s forces conquered Aalst, Geraardsbergen and
Ninove in early April. In Ghent, the Estates of Flanders remained in permanent session trying to find
a solution to the shortfall of revenue, for the regency council did not have sufficient funds to
mobilize an army. After several meetings they decided to address the financial crisis by an expedient
never before attempted in the county, namely the sale of annuities on the whole county. Negotiations
began in early April to set up an “ervelijke rente” (hereditary annuity) of 1,200 Flemish pounds (lb.
gr.) that would be paid “up tghemeene land” (on the common land), as the deputies from the
hinterland of Ypres stated.19 The initiative of the Three Members of Flanders ultimately produced
annuities totalling 100,000 crowns (20,000 lb. gr.), which would be contracted at an interest rate of
6.67 percent. On 16 April 1485, the regency council stipulated the precise conditions of the sale in an
ordinance that still survives.20 Sales of the renten started immediately afterwards.
Despite the Estates’ annuity drive, the Flemish counter-attack failed. Maximilian’s troops
encircled the city of Ghent and the Swin estuary, used by ships to enter Bruges from the North Sea.
The port surrendered, as did Ghent after internal division resulted in the imprisonment of the regency
council leaders. On 28 June 1485, a peace treaty was sealed, abolishing the regency council and
punishing many of the Archduke’s opponents. This treaty did not resolve the political crisis in
Flanders, however. The Ghent craft guilds rebelled when Maximilian made his entry into the city in
July 1485, and on several more occasions over the next few years. In November 1487, the city of
Ghent rebelled against the Habsburg prince. Maximilian himself was captured and imprisoned in
February 1488 in Bruges, which had joined the Ghent rebellion. In exchange for his freedom, the
Habsburg prince signed a peace treaty, which re-established the regency council, on 16 May 1488.
Once released, however, the emperor’s son mobilized an army and launched another attack on the
county. The Estates of Flanders did not wait this time for Maximilian to attack. On 1 June, they
agreed for the second time to sell renten on the whole county. In a charter of that date, the regency
council stated that the Members of Flanders would sell annuities totalling 300,000 crowns (60,000
lb. gr.) at an interest rate of 8.33 percent.21 Revenue from the sale would be used to raise an army to
defend the county against the German troops. Although Brussels and Leuven joined the political and
military opposition and fought against Maximilian, this war also ended in disaster for the Flemish
regency council. During 1489, German troops succeeded in conquering Flanders, though it was not
until the summer of 1492 that the county would officially recognize Maximilian as regent for his son.
The battle over the regency ended after a decade of dispute and war, which had been partially
financed by a ‘financial evolution’.
The Sale of Annuities in 1485 and 1488
Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528), homme politique et bibliophile, ed. J. HAEMERS, H. WIJSMAN & C. VAN HOOREBEECK,
Turnhout, 2007, p. 21-99.
19
“Omme daermede doorloghe te sustineirne ende die ghefineirt dommestellinghe van den penninghen te doene up
tghemeene land van Vlaendren” (edited by W. BLOCKMANS, Handelingen van de leden en van de staten van Vlaanderen.
Regering van Maria van Bourgondië en Filips de Schone (5 januari 1477-26 september 1506), vol. 2, Brussels, 1973, p.
349).
20
City Archives of Ghent (hereafter: CAG), series 94 (political charters), nr. 733. The document is edited in Appendix A
of this article. Bruges and Ypres received a vidimus of the charter, but Ypres’s copy was lost in the bombing of the city
archives in 1914 (I. DIEGERICK, Inventaire analytique et chronologique des chartes et documents appartenant aux
archives de la ville d’Ypres, vol. 7, Bruges, 1868, pp. 180-181). Bruges’s copy is located in the City Archives of Bruges
(hereafter: CAB), Political charters, 1st series, nr. 1205.
21
The original charter has not survived. There are copies in the Archives départementales du Nord in Lille, France
(hereafter: ADN), series B, nr. 1287, 19154, and nr. 2137, 69601 (document B in the appendix of this article). A copy
was also kept in the Ypres archives until 1914 (DIEGERICK, Inventaire analytique, vol. 4, p. 145-146, and vol. 7, p. 188).
The regional sale of annuities to finance the wars of Flanders was not ‘revolutionary’, as the practice
was also used in contemporary Holland and in Brabant in the 1470s.22 Nevertheless, this measure to
centralise public debt was an innovation for Flanders, since the previous sales of annuities had only
been undertaken by Flemish cities committing their own revenues. The Flemish innovation aligns
with the conclusions of many studies of the fiscal and financial effects of medieval warfare, in that
the measures taken to finance armies led the county’s elite to innovate and centralise financial policy.
Eventually, driven by warfare and fiscal centralisation, domain states evolved into what historians
have called ‘fiscal states’ or ‘tax states’.23 In the short term, however, belligerent elites chiefly relied
on routine methods of financing armies, unless the amount of money needed forced them to modify
traditional practices of fundraising, such as the sale of annuities.24 In 1480s Flanders, the Estates
consciously chose to use a traditional means of collecting money rapidly, even as they slightly
altered that customary practice by expanding the security of the loan to the revenues of the whole
county. They chose to employ the sale of renten because organizing the sale was relatively
inexpensive, and the sale would produce immediate payments in cash. Reports of the meetings of the
Estates of Flanders in May 1488 explicitly mention that Ghent, Bruges and Ypres preferred this
measure to solve their temporary insolvency, because, the cities argued, it was the best means to
“immediately find cash money […] for the most profit, and at the lowest loss [for the county]”.25
Opting for a sale meant that the cities would not have to levy new taxes, which would subject their
inhabitants to a sudden additional fiscal expense. Moreover, a new tax was not certain to yield
enough money. While the on-going war required the steady revenue that a consumer tax would yield,
levying a tax in these circumstances might have aroused protest. The sale of annuities would yield
money swiftly which could be immediately invested in the war, while the county would have to wait
for tax revenues. In addition, a region-wide sale meant that renten could be sold anywhere in the
county where the money was needed.
Another advantage of annuities sales was that the interest rates of these voluntary loans could
be kept low, because urban governors knew that annuities were popular investments for citizens.26
Borrowing money from merchants during wartime would have entailed a substantial financial loss
for the county. The cities’ tradition of selling renten and the promise of regular future income created
a certain trust among potential creditors. Long-term debt in Flemish cities was traditionally funded
by specific tax revenues set aside by a legitimate government to service the public debt, just as in
several Italian city-states.27 Conforming with this tradition, the regency council decided in April
22
In 1472, the cities of Brabant collectively sold annuities to be repaid from the revenues of the ducal domain, in order to
finance the war of Charles the Bold in Lorraine. This financial innovation for the duchy has not yet been the focus of
thorough study, although its effects on the finances of small cities are discussed in J.-P. PEETERS, De financiën van de
kleine en secundaire steden in Brabant van de 12de tot het midden der 16de eeuw, Antwerp, 1980, p. 297-300.
23
J.-P. GENET & M. LE MENÉ (ed.), Genèse de l’état moderne. Prélèvement et redistribution, Paris, 1987; R. BONNEY
(ed.), The rise of the fiscal state in Europe c. 1200-1815, Oxford, 1999. Case-studies on the Low Countries in J.-M.
CAUCHIES (ed.), Finances et financiers des princes et des villes à l’époque bourguignonne, Turnhout, 2004.
24
K. BEGUIN, Financer la guerre au XVII siècle. La dette publique et les rentiers de l’absolutisme, Champ Vallon, 2012.
See also P. HOFFMAN & K. NORBAG, Fiscal crises, liberty, and representative institutions, 1450-1789, Stanford, 1994.
25
“Omme stapans ghereedt gheldt te vindene voor tbeste ende tnaeste middele, ten meesten oorbaere, ende ten minsten
quetse”. The reports can be found in a letter from the delegate of Ypres to his home town (edited by I. DIEGERICK,
Correspondance des magistrats d’Ypres députés à Gand et à Bruges pendant les troubles de Flandre sous Maximilien,
duc d’Autriche, roi des Romains etc., Bruges, 1855, p. 243).
26
See for instance the study of public finance in Ghent: M. BOONE, Geld en macht. De Gentse stadsfinanciën en de
Bourgondische staatsvorming (1384-1453), Ghent, 1990; and W. RYCKBOSCH, Tussen Gavere en Cadzand. De Gentse
stadsfinanciën op het einde van de middeleeuwen (1460-1495), Ghent, 2007. Also in the private sphere, renten were a
common mechanism to finance households and economic investments, see S. HUTTON, Women and economic activities
in late medieval Ghent, New York etc., 2011, p. 81-101.
27
FRATIANNI & SPINELLI, “Italian city-states”, p. 274. See also A. MOLHO, “The state and public finance: a hypothesis
based on the history of late medieval Florence”, in Journal of Modern History, 67, 1995, p. 97-135; L. PELLOZO, “The
Venetian government debt, 1350-1650”, in Urban public debts, p. 61-74.
1485 and again in June 1488, that urban taxes would provide the funds to repay the new renten. On
both occasions, creditors were assured that they would be reimbursed by “one or more taxes on the
common land”, as the report of the Estates of Flanders meeting of 1488 put it.28 The 1485 charter
firmly stated that the cities would be able to levy the needed taxes without interference by the count,
perhaps in order to put creditors’ minds at rest by alleviating the fear that if Maximilian took over the
county, he would refuse to repay the renten of April 1485. If he were to do this, the charter
guaranteed creditors that the Estates would still be empowered to determine the payment of annuities
itself. In 1485 and 1488, the Members of Flanders were merely adapting a common practice of
fundraising in Flanders; the Flemish answer to the sudden need for cash was found in its traditions.
There was, however, one innovation. For the first time in history, the Flemish cities collectively
promised that all taxes in the county were pledged as security for payment of the annual interest. For
example, the 1485 rentebrief, the individual certificate given to the buyer of a rente as proof of
purchase, stated that “all excises, rents and other property of the said three cities (Ghent, Bruges, and
Ypres) and of the other cities and places under their jurisdiction” would guarantee the annual interest
payments. That meant that the whole county would be in debt because, since the High Middle Ages,
there were no ‘cities and places’ exempt from their jurisdiction in the county. Even the tax revenues
of places lying in areas of the county already taken by Maximilian’s troops served as a guarantee.29
Therefore, the rentebrief assured the owner that, in the future, he or she could be reimbursed
anywhere in Flanders. Specific circumstances of the time period explain the exceptional fact that the
Flemish cities assumed collective responsibility for the repayment of the annuities of April 1485 and
June 1488. First, it seems that the Estates increased the amount of revenues used to secure the
annuities because they needed a lot of money. Normally, an issue of annuities totalled approximately
500 lb. gr., while in 1485, the total amount sought by the sale of renten was 1200 lb. gr. This much
larger issue of renten required more security. Secondly, making the whole county responsible for
repayment made the worth of the annuity offering more attractive to potential buyers. Perhaps the
Estates included more security by expanding the financial basis for repaying annuities in order to
prevent creditors from rejecting the rente because the guarantee seemed insufficient. If this was true,
we can presume that the Estates expected creditors to have doubts about their debtor’s solvency.
Following that logic, the Members might have decided that more collateral could increase the
citizens’ trust. In short, we can conclude that the scale of warfare in combination with acute
problems with financing troops forced the Estates to change a traditional means of fundraising. This
confirms the finding of the historians mentioned above that a specific financial crisis moved the
Estates to centralise public debt.
The Repayment of Public Debt
However, there were additional motives that seem to have inspired the Flemish Estates to collectivise
the responsibility for the annuities sale. Two restrictions found in the count’s charters concerning (1)
“Item, dat men de vorseide rente ende andere lasten upt land staende […] zal lossen bye ene of meer ommestellinghen
up tzelve ghemeene landt” (DIEGERICK, Correspondance des magistrats, p. 244).
29
“Ende hebben hiertoe verbonden ende verbinden ons alle tsamen alle dassisen, renten ende ander goed toebehoorende
denzelven drie steden ende andere steden ende plecken onder ons sorterende, ne gheene weghesteken ende ooc de
goedinghen van ons ende onse naercommers ende de goeddinghen van denzelven steden ende plecken waer die
gheleghen zijn of bevonden zulen wesen, de welcke assisen, renten ende goeddinghen wij stellen ende habandonneren ter
eerliker execucie van allen heeren, rechters, jugen ende wetten, gheestelic ende weerlic, omme bij arreeste van onsen
persoonen ende goedinghen voorscreven ons ende onse naercommers te bedwijnghene ter betalinghe van den
achterstellen van den voorseiden renten”. The charter, dated 22 April 1485, is located in ADN, series B, 2131, nr. 69169.
It was the property of Agneete, the widow of Lodewijk Laris, who had bought a rente of 2 lb. gr. in Bruges. Other
rentebrieven of 1485 can be found in the same box (nrs. 69170-2), in nr. 2132 (nrs. 69308-13), and in the General State
Archives (hereafter: GSA), Brussels, Charters of Flanders, 2 nd series, boxes 50 and 51.
28
the method of repaying the annuities, and (2) loan expenditures, reveal the conditions the Estates
placed on centralising public debts in the county. The concrete measures laid out to repay the loan
show that the Estates intended to cement their political power over the county. In these charters, the
Members of Flanders stipulated that the Estates would be responsible for the fiscal initiatives that
repaid the loans. Though these charters were composed by the regency council, they clearly intended
to institutionalise the assumption of financial control over the county by its three main cities – or, as
we will see, of Ghent and Bruges primarily. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these cities
had dominated the decision-making process in the county, but they had gradually lost power to the
Burgundian court after 1400. The revolts of the last quarter of the fifteenth century were clearly an
attempt by those cities to recapture it. The initiative of the Members in deciding that the security of
the 1485 voluntary loans would be expanded to the whole county, and making themselves, the
Members, responsible for the sale, repayment, and, as we will see, spending the collected money
demonstrates that, in the 1480s, the Members actually exerted governmental control over fiscal state
administration. The decisions taken to repay the long-term debt also show that they wanted to keep
that powerful position in the future.
What did the Estates decide on the repayment of the renten? Both in 1485 and 1488, the
Estates stipulated that their creditors could “receive, cash and collect their rente on our common land
of Flanders by taxes and levies on the county on the day of their repayment” (see the charter in
Appendix A). While a concrete fiscal initiative was not yet specified, the charter of 1485 promised
that the levy of a new tax had to be approved by the ‘majority of the citizens and the inhabitants of
the county’, while the charter of 1488 only required the approval of “the majority of the citizens of
Ghent, Bruges and Ypres”.30 This was a common procedure in Flanders, but it shows that the
regency council had not yet asked the representative institutions of the county to approve the new
tax. Although the Estates presumably intended to consult the subordinate councils (such as the Great
Councils of the cities), it is striking that the cities of Ghent and Bruges proceeded immediately with
selling the renten without asking for that approval. The two cities took the lead in this financial
operation, while Ypres was reluctant to join them. In 1488, the city refused to participate in the sale,
even though its representatives had approved the charter stipulating it – perhaps under pressure.31
Ghent and Bruges immediately started selling annuities, however, because they needed the cash at
once. The disastrous course of the war obliged them to be quick; discussion of the conditions for
repayment and consultation with subjects were postponed for some later date. At their meeting in
May 1488, for instance, the Estates specified that the problem of repayment would be solved
“immediately after the county is pacified again”.32 In any case, even if the war ended disastrously for
the Members – and it did – with the charter of the count, the Estates had a legal document which
obligated the count to consult them to levy a new tax to repay the renten. By the stipulations of the
charters of 1485 and 1488, the Estates again legalised their interference in the fiscal administration of
the count.
As one can imagine, after the wars of 1485 and 1489, repayment of the loans posed serious
problems. The representatives who had to determine the actual repayment turned out to be the
political opponents of those who had decided to sell the annuities. Maximilian replaced political
leaders and officials in the three cities after he had established authority over the county in 1485 and
“Wel verstaende dat de meeste menichte van den voorseiden poorters ende inghesetenen daerinne gheconsentert of
noch consenteren” (1485), and “wel verstaende dat de meeste menichte van den poorters van den voorseiden drie steden
Ghend, Brugghe ende Ypre int ghuent dies voorseid es consenteren zullen” (1488). See also BLOCKMANS, De
volksvertegenwoordiging, p. 393-395.
31
Ibidem, p. 395. After the war, when a lawsuit came before the Parliament of Paris between a creditor and the city of
Ypres because the city did not want to repay a rente sold in 1488, Ypres claimed that it had protested against the sale of
1488 and it had been forced on them by the city of Ghent (S. DAUCHY, De processen in beroep uit Vlaanderen bij het
Parlement van Parijs (1320-1521). Een rechtshistorisch onderzoek naar de wording van staat en souvereiniteit in de
Bourgondisch-Habsburgse periode, Brussels, 1995, p. 200-203).
32
“Terstondt van dat landt in payse gestelt wert” (DIEGERICK, Correspondance des magistrats, p. 244).
30
1489. At those times, the former rulers of the cities were punished, their properties were confiscated,
they were banished or executed, and replaced by supporters of the Archduke.33 The irony of history
thus determined that those who won the war had to solve the financial problems of those who had
lost it. The winners of the conflict had to repay the loans that had been used to fight them. Although
the outcome of the financial innovations introduced by the Flemish Estates when they sold annuities
on the entire county presumably differed from their original intentions, no source addresses the
repayment of these annuities in the early years after the wars. Even though the Members of Flanders
probably had an idea about the method of repayment when they acquired the debt, the sudden
political and military changes in the county did not allow them time to establish the administration to
handle the actual payment of the renten. After the war, in the fall of 1485, the Estates met to
deliberate “on the matter of the hereditary annuities which had been sold on the land of Flanders”.34
This was now a real problem, as citizens of Ghent were imprisoned in Brussels and Antwerp because
of their city’s insolvency.35 However these references do not specify the procedure that the Members
of Flanders had originally intended when they planned the sale in 1485. In Bruges, some of the
revenue of the sale of renten in June 1488 was used to repay the renten that were sold in April
1485.36 This was a repayment strategy that could only be used once rather a structural solution to
solve the outstanding debt. The continuing war in Flanders caused the city accounts of these years to
be extremely chaotic and fragmented. For these reasons, the method by which the annuities of 1485
and 1488 were repaid is still unclear. Only occasional references to sporadic repayments appear in
the city accounts of the 1480s.37
The difficulty of finding information about repayment of the loan is certainly related to the
character of the sale. It was intended as a non-recurring revenue, contracted to supply a sudden need
for money. While the Members of Flanders may have intended to create a structural administration
for repayment, the military disaster and Maximilian’s assumption of power disrupted the plans for
settlement. For that reason, it is remarkable that the sale of 1488 was still a great success, even
though repayment of the renten sold in April 1485 was inadequate. One important factor was the
identity of the people who sold the renten. The officials who had sold the renten in April 1485 had
lost power afterwards. Therefore, they could claim that they were not personally responsible for the
inadequate repayment of the 1485 loan. Those in authority over the county after the Maximilian’s
victory, and especially the Archduke himself, could be blamed for lack of repayment of the loans.38
The success of the sale of 1488 shows that the annuity buyers followed this logic and that they
trusted that the new sale was a good investment. The representatives may have promised that they
would work diligently to repay not only the newly contracted obligations, but also those of 1485.
See, for instance, for Bruges: A. JANSSENS, “Macht en onmacht van de Brugse schepenbank in de periode 1477-1490”,
in Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis te Brugge, 133, 1996, p. 5-45; for Ghent: K. HANCKÉ,
“Confiscaties als politiek wapen in intern stedelijke conflicten, casus: Gent: 1477-1492”, Handelingen van de in
Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 49, 1995, p. 197-220; H. ROOSE, “Willem Rijm in opstand
tegen Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk (1482-1492)”, in Handelingen van de Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en
Oudheidkunde te Gent, 64, 2010, p. 129-166.
34
“Up de materie van der ervelicker rente up tvorseide land van Vlaendren vercocht” (BLOCKMANS, Handelingen van de
leden, p. 368).
35
CAG, series 400 (city accounts), nr. 29, fol. 199v and 225r.
36
210 lb. gr. of the annual debt of 429 lb. gr. would be repaid (CAB, war accounts (inventory number 17), nr. 5, fol. 40v43r). Some citizens gave up their payments on the first term of the rente because they considered it as a once-only
voluntary loan (without interest) to the city (see war account, nr. 5, fol. 32r).
37
In 1488, for instance, the city of Ghent paid Race van den Heede 6 lb. gr. for an outstanding debt of three years,
coming from a ‘rente’ on the county of 2 lb. gr. which he had bought in April 1485 (CAG, series 20, nr. 6, fol. 132r). See
also CAG, series 400, nr. 30, fol. 420r.
38
In 1488, the Estates accused Maximilian of misgovernment on this issue (J. DUMOLYN & J. HAEMERS, “‘Les bonnes
causes du peuple pour se révolter’. Le contrat politique en Flandre médiévale d’après Guillaume Zoete (1488)”, in Avant
le contrat social. Le contrat politique dans l’Occident médiéval, XIIIe-XVe siècle, ed. F. FORONDA, Paris, 2011, p. 327346.
33
Indeed, some annuity buyers of 1485 were repaid in Bruges with the revenues of the new sale, as we
have seen. As an extra inducement to purchase a rente, the rentebrief of 1488 assured the buyer that
the interest would be increased by one-fifth in case of default on a payment.39 The 1488 Estates also
promised to give the 1485 creditors a rentebrief if they had not yet received one.40 There is no further
information about structural solutions to repay the public debt.
After the final peace treaty had been signed in 1492, the repayment problem remained
unsolved. Having conquered the county for a second time, Maximilian made no effort to repay the
voluntary loans of 1485 and 1488. The Estates raised the issue at their meetings over the next few
years, but there was no resolution for more than a decade. Wim Blockmans calculated that one
meeting in five of the Estates of Flanders held between 1492 and 1506 discussed who was
responsible for the repayment.41 Finally, in the summer of 1504, the Members of Flanders, together
with Count Philip, decided to levy a yearly aide of 20,000 crowns for the next six years to be used to
reimburse the creditors of 1485 and 1488. On the back of the surviving original rentebrieven is the
notation that the rente was retroactively repaid in 1504 and 1505. The annuity buyers of 1485 had to
wait for almost twenty years before they were repaid. The fact that many of these creditors were the
political opponents of those in power after the revolts may explain why the repayment took so long.
Nevertheless, the trauma associated with the first county-wide sale of annuities may also explain
why the next generation of Flemish urban officials never used this strategy to finance state expenses.
While governments elsewhere were employing this method of raising funds in the interim, the
Estates of Flanders did not again agree to sell renten on the county until 1544.42 The disaster of the
renten of 1485 and 1488 may also have taught the Estates-General of the Low Countries that they
needed to determine the repayment method at the same time that they authorized a new sale. If that
was the case, Flemish sales of annuities in the 1480s indirectly conditioned the financial innovations
of the sixteenth century.
Revenues and Expenses
The charters of 1485 and 1488 also restricted how the voluntary loans would be spent. In the 1485
charter, the count stipulated that the money could only be used “for the defence and the highest
welfare of our land, and for nothing else” (see appendix A). This restriction on the use of state
revenues reflected the policy established by the Flemish Estates after the revolt of 1477. Before the
revolt, Duke Charles the Bold had the power to demand money from the Members and spend it as he
wished. His successors, Maximilian and Mary, did not. The Archduke might have received more
financial aid from the cities than his father-in-law had, but Maximilian had much less control over
those funds. During Mary’s reign, the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres retained much more control
over the funds they sent to the court. In exchange for their financial generosity, the cities acquired a
39
As was written in a rentebrief (ADN, series B, nr. 2137, 69592). Other rentebrieven are preserved in the same box
(numbers 69586-69604), and in GSA, Charters of Flanders, 2 nd series, box 53, ‘1 June 1488’.
40
DIEGERICK, Correspondance des magistrats, p. 244. A memorandum of a meeting of the Bruges treasury in summer
1488 reveals that not all of the 1485 rentebrieven had been sealed. According to the treasury, this could cause potential
creditors to decline to purchase a future rente from the city. Therefore, they decided to seal the rentebrieven of 1485.
“Ten fijne dat ooc te meer persoonen gheneghen zouden moghen zijn de voorseide rente te coopene, zo es gheadviseirt
dat men denghonen die over drie jaren rente cochten up de drie steden en huere brieven niet en hebben, indien zij van
deser renten coopen willen, huere eerste brieven zeghelen zal metten zeghele van verbande van deser stede” (State
Archives of Bruges, Fonds Découvertes, nr. 183).
41
This is examined in detail by BLOCKMANS, De volksvertegenwoordiging, p. 396-400. The fact that many lawsuits in
the courts of the count of Flanders were related to the repayment of the renten explains why so many copies of private
rentebrieven are preserved in the archives of the count’s administration (see footnotes 29 and 39).
42
While in 1515, renten of this kind were sold against future receipts of a bede in some regions of the Low Countries, the
Estates of Flanders stubbornly refused to sell collective renten again until the autumn of 1544 (TRACY, A financial
revolution, p. 60; MADDENS, “De invoering van de ‘Nieuwe Middelen’”, p. 362-363).
role in determining how the money was spent. The Members severely limited the spending of many
aides granted to the court during Mary’s reign. The contrast with the reign of Charles the Bold is
striking. While the fiscal burden of ducal military policy was the same in both reigns, the Members
of Flanders had extensive control over the court’s expenditures during Mary’s tenure. The Members
naturally tried to preserve this political power, while the court sought to rid itself of these
restrictions. Maximilian’s eagerness to avoid the spending restrictions on the money he received
from the Members was a major reason for their decision to deny him the regency for his son in
1482.43 While they governed the county between 1482 and 1485 and again in 1488 and 1489, the
Three Members clearly stipulated the destination of the money they collected for the count. In the
1485 and 1488 charters the count promised that the revenue from the annuity sales would be spent in
the county’s interest, particularly for its defence, yet another sign that the Members of Flanders were
not protesting the existence of centralized policy in Flanders when they rebelled against Maximilian,
but were only condemning the duke’s autocratic direction of the state administration. Analysis of the
sixteenth-century fiscal policies of the Flemish Estates also show that the Estates required a
dominant voice in the central government’s expenditures, especially for military matters.44
The Members naturally organized the sale of the annuities per Member. Keen on their
autonomy, the cities of Bruges and Ghent monopolised financial administration of the actual sale. In
1485, Bruges appointed Pieter van Zinghem to coordinate sales in its kwartier, and Ghent appointed
Jan Ruflaert to organize the sale in the rest of the county. Reluctant to join the other cities in this
initiative, Ypres did not appoint an official. In 1485, both officials kept a record of the revenue and
expenses of the sale, but only (a copy of) the Bruges account survives.45 For 1488, however, there
are surviving records from both cities. Jan Nutin was responsible for collecting and disbursing the
money in Bruges, and Jeronimus van Keulen for Ghent, though he collected additional revenues
from the Bruges sale after the city sold more annuities than originally intended.46 In 1485, Bruges
collected a total of 6,435 lb. gr. (at a annual interest of 429 lb. gr.); while in 1488, Ghent and Bruges
together collected 15,240 lb. gr. (at a annual interest of 1270 lb. gr.).47 Only the Bruges’ clerks noted
the number of rentebrieven sold in the city. In 1485, the city succeeded in convincing 105 creditors
to make voluntary loans to the city, while in 1488, 96 citizens decided to buy annuities “up de drie
hooftsteden van onsen voorseiden lande van Vlaendren”.48 It is also possible to analyze the social
background of the Bruges renteniers, because Pieter van Zinghem and Jan Nutin recorded their
names, but the lists of creditors who bought annuities in Ghent have been lost. The exact meaning of
the clerks’ notation that Ghent and Bruges had begun sealing new rentebrieven in 1489 remains
unclear. Presumably, these were certificates of the renten which had been sold in 1488, but these
certificates could also attest to additional sales in 1489.49 The distinct bookkeeping records from
43
HAEMERS, For the common good, p. 266.
N. MADDENS, De beden in het graafschap Vlaanderen tijdens de regering van Keizer Karel V (1515-1550), Kortrijk,
1978, p. 415-416.
45
CAB, series war accounts, nr. 4. The document (which probably dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century)
states that it is an exact copy of the original account (which got lost).
46
CAB, series war accounts, nr. 6; CAG, series 20, nr. 6, fol. 1r: “Yeronimus van Cuelne, ghecommitteert ten ontfanghe
ende rekeninghe te houdene van den vercochten renten ten laste van den lande bij der stede van Ghend, vercocht de
somme van 10.153 lb. 19 s. 5 d. gr., hierinne begrepen de 280 lb. 8 s. 6 d. gr. bij meester Yoos Yoens, insghelijcx de 469
lb. 10 s. 11 d. gr. bij joncheer Adriaan van Schoonhove, ontfaen van die van Brugghe ter causen van den rente bij
hemlieden meer vercocht dan de poorcie”.
47
CAB, war accounts, nr. 4, fol. 100r-114v and 148r-149r (1485); nr. 5, fol. 20r-30r and 148r-149r (1488). The daily
wage of a skilled labourer in Bruges was 11 d. gr. That meant that approximately 5000 soldiers could be paid for one
month with the profits of the sale of rentes in 1485.
48
CAB, war accounts, nr. 5, fol. 2r.
49
CAB, war accounts, nr. 6, fol. 73r and CAG, series 20, nr. 6, fol. 184r. If Ghent sold new renten in 1489, then the
amount was 280 lb. 8 s. 6 d. gr. listed on the first page of the account (see note 46). However, another account in the city
archives (series 20, nr. 8) mentions that Yeronimus van Cuelne had transferred a sum of 1,080 lb. gr. to Jan van den
Zande, “van den penninghen commende van den vercoopinghen van der voornoemde rente” (fol. 3r).
44
Ghent and Bruges show that the cities received and spent the money separately, though they must
have deliberated frequently about the expenses of this financial operation.
Did Bruges and Ghent spend the money for its intended purpose? The answer is yes. In 1485,
Bruges spent 94.87% of its revenues on the payment of troops, artillery costs and other war-related
expenses. Some money was also spent to cover administrative costs of the sale and to pay the
messengers who travelled to the military camps and to Ghent. The Bruges evidence that revenues of
the sale were immediately spent to pay the troops is an important indication of real political
centralisation, because a central institution, the regency council, made the decisions about the
disbursement of the loans. On 22 April 1485 (most of the total renten were sold on that day), the
Bruges receiver transferred 2000 lb. gr., approximately one-third of the total revenue from the
Bruges sales, to the Ghent receiver so that he could pay the troops for thirty days and cover the
artillery expenses for the French army allied with them.50 Since the account stated that this transfer
was authorized by the order of the Three Members, we know that the Members jointly decided how a
major portion of the revenue from the sale would be spent. They had mobilized the revenues of the
whole province for an immediate need through the mechanism of credit. This act fulfils the
conditions for a ‘financial revolution’ in Flanders stipulated by Dickson and Tracy, who argue that
the expenditure of future revenue (namely provincial tax income) through a long-term public debt is
a characteristic of this type of ‘revolution’. However, this is really an important innovation in
Flemish state finances rather than a giant leap in a progressive, and therefore teleological, revolution
of state finances. In addition, the Members of Flanders followed a typical pattern for the county by
deciding to spend the money on a common goal (payment of troops under the leadership of the
lieutenant-general of Flanders, Jacob of Romont), but administering the collection and payment
separately. Bruges spent the remaining revenue from the sale on the defence of its own kwartier.
Bruges paid the soldiers manning the fortifications on the borders of the Bruges kwartier and along
the coast, at Gravelines, Sluis, Nieuwpoort and Middelburg. They equipped ships to fend off the
enemy at sea.51 Although it appears that Bruges decided autonomously how to expend the remaining
revenue from the 1485 annuities sale, one can argue that their action still served the intended purpose
of the sale, namely the defence of the entire county. According to the spirit of the time and the
political traditions of the county, the Members of Flanders decided financial and military issues both
jointly and separately, in the same manner as they governed the county.
The same pattern governed the expenditure of the revenue from the sale in 1488. The Bruges
account stated that the Three Members had agreed that 40 % of that city’s revenues would be paid to
the troops who defended the kwartier of Ghent – presumably, because German forces were active in
that region.52 However, it is impossible to ascertain exactly how the portions Bruges and Ghent
received in 1488 were spent. In their accounts, the receivers of both cities combined the revenue
from the sale of renten together with other income sources, and they did not specify which income
source financed which expense. The Bruges account only stated explicitly that a (small) part of the
revenue (3.78 %) was used to repay the annual rente of the county-wide loan of April 1485 (see
above). Nevertheless, it is clear that the voluntary loans from citizens were largely used to cover war
The sum was paid to “omme te betalene de tweeduust vortganghers ghesellen van orloghen bij ordonnancie van den
Drie Leden ghecommen ten dienste van den lande van Vlaendren van .xxx. daghen ende ooc omme te betalene de
oncosten van der artillerye ghesonden bij den conijnc van Vranckerijcke haerwaerts omme ter deffencie van den vorseide
volke van orloghen” (CAB, war accounts, nr. 4, fol. 117r-v). The same account mentions that most renten were sold on
that date (fol. 110r-114v).
51
CAB, war accounts, nr. 4, fol. 118r: a sum was paid to the “capitein van .xxxii. ghesellen van orloghen dienende der
stede van Brugghe als roode capproenen” and to the men who guarded the captain of the city (the lord of Gruuthuze).
52
“Betaelt den heeren van der wet van Ghend bi der hand van joncheere Adriaen van Schoonhove de somme van hondert
pond groten ende die van den penningen commende van der vercoopinghe van den voorseide renten mids dat zij hebben
begheert te hebbene van elken .c. lb. gr. vercochte rente in Brugghe .xl. lb. groten omme die bij hemlieden te zijne
ghecontribuert in huerlieder quartier in de affairen van den lande ter oorloghewaert” (CAB, war accounts, nr. 5, fol.
150r).
50
expenses, for the majority of the revenue from this account was spent on troops. Only a small
fraction was used for administrative costs. Just as it had been three years before, Bruges was
responsible for fortifying places in its kwartier and Ghent was responsible for its hinterland.
Together, they sponsored the forces that joined Philip of Cleves in his ‘march’ on Brussels.53 As in
1485, the Three Members of Flanders decided to use the revenue from the annuity sale for a common
goal, the defence of the county, even though each city spent its revenue separately.
In addition to this ‘common revenue’, each city helped finance the war with ‘particular’
sources of income. Analysis of these shows that the sale of renten represented a minor, but not
negligible, income stream for the cities to meet the expenses of the war against Maximilian. Only
one-fifth of the income in the Ghent account of 1488, for example, came from the profits of the
renten sale, while the rest derived from voluntary loans from citizens of Ghent, portions of aides
which were awarded to the count for military purposes, confiscations from enemies, etc. Ghent had a
wide range of financial resources available to wage war, and the renten on the county were only a
small, yet significant, piece of that income stream. Of the revenue collected by Yeronimus, for
example, 57 % came from voluntary and interest-free loans made by Ghent citizens to the city.54
Wouter Ryckbosch has shown that the many special revenue sources the city had found to finance
the war fed not only the war accounts of 1488 but also Ghent’s regular city accounts.55 The same can
be said of Bruges. Only 45.9 % of Jan Nutin’s revenues derived from the sale of renten; as in Ghent,
the remainder came from voluntary loans from citizens (without interest) and parts of aides assigned
to wage the count’s wars. The rulers of both cities were quite creative in their search for fiscal
revenue and different types of voluntary loans that they could use to influence the conduct of the
war. Research has shown that the militias of both cities formed a well-equipped army that held out
for four years against the Habsburg prince’s forces.56 Both Ghent and Bruges used their revenues to
pay the troops who defended the county borders as well as the army that took Brussels in the summer
of 1488. In spite of these military efforts, Ghent and Bruges surrendered in summer 1489 – albeit
temporarily, because war resumed in 1490, and finally ended in a painful defeat for the financially
exhausted cities. In any case, the surviving war account records of Ghent and Bruges demonstrate
that the cities spent the profits from the sale of annuities in June 1488 for their intended (although not
achieved) purpose: military defence of the county.
The Creditors
Who were the creditors of Ghent and Bruges in 1485 and 1488, and why did they buy renten? This
question can only be answered for Bruges, because its accounts provide the names of the creditors
who chose to purchase annuities in these years. Scholarship on citizens’ motives for purchasing
annuities has shown that economic and financial reasons often inspired creditors to loan voluntarily
to city administrations.57 War, with its economic uncertainties, led citizens to prefer safe
53
Though Philip of Cleves had conquered the county in 1485 by order of Maximilian, he sided with the Flemish cities in
their second war against the Habsburg prince (HAEMERS, ‘Philippe de Clèves’, p. 53-67).
54
Namely 28,907 lb. gr. “ontfanc van diversschen leeninghen” were noted down in the account, “bij vele ende diverssche
persoonen van deser stede, zowel gheestelicke als weerlicke, ghedaen omme de penninghen daeraf commende bekeert te
werdene in tfait van der oorloghe” (CAG, series 20, nr. 6, fol. 3r).
55
RYCKBOSCH, Tussen Gavere en Cadzand, p. 214-217.
56
J. HAEMERS & B. VERBIST, “Het Gentse gemeenteleger in het laatste kwart van de vijftiende eeuw. Een politieke,
financiële en militaire analyse van de stadsmilitie”, in Handelingen van de Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en
Oudheidkunde te Gent, 62, 2008, p. 291-325; P. STABEL, “Militaire organisatie, bewapening en wapenbezit in het
laatmiddeleeuwse Brugge”, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 89, 2011, p. 1049-1074.
57
See, for instance, HANUS, Tussen stad en eigen gewin, p. 120.
investments, such as annuities.58 David Stasavage has argued that medieval and early modern citystates found it easier to borrow at low interest rates because their creditworthiness rested on the twin
foundations of constitutional checks and balances and the partisan preferences of the ruling elite. Our
analysis clearly shows that both these factors influenced the success of the annuity sales in Bruges
during 1485 and 1488. Furthermore, Stasavage’s argument, that the inclusion of the merchant elite
among the leadership of representative institutions of these city-states was responsible for cheap
credit, also holds true for Bruges.59 Bruges was not a city-state, but rather a part of the county of
Flanders. However, mutatis mutandis, the Flemish cities had much in common with the fourteenthcentury Italian city-states, because these Flemish cities governed the surrounding countryside and
even the entire county in ways that enhanced their political autonomy. Bruges was ruled by a
powerful merchant elite who had built their fortunes on the international and regional trade made
possible because their city played a pivotal role in European trade networks. Bruges enjoyed
financial and commercial resources which made it, in the words of James Murray, the “cradle of
capitalism”.60 It is therefore not surprising that Bruges citizens possessed considerable wealth that
the city administration could tap to wage war. Laurence Derycke has shown that Bruges’ mighty and
wealthy elite were loyal creditors to the city in times of need.61 She correctly adds that other urban
groups also invested in the city’s annuities. Artisans, craftsmen and prosperous citizens were
important annuity buyers, without whom the city would not have had the necessary funds to govern
its territory effectively. Our analysis also demonstrates that corporate groups and urban artisans lent
large sums of money to the city in the 1480s. Why were these groups and citizens so willing to loan
their money to the city? The following section analyses their motivations.
Many of these creditors also held a political or administrative office in Bruges during the
reign of the regency council, or in the preceding period (1477-1482) when the members of Willem
Moreel’s faction controlled the city. Willem Moreel, a wealthy merchant, was burgomaster of Bruges
in 1483 and 1484 and sheriff in 1489. With relatives and friends and the support of a powerful
network of merchants and leaders of the craft guilds, he led the Bruges revolt against Maximilian. In
1478, Moreel had been a financial advisor to the Archduke, but Maximilian’s autocratic behaviour
drove Moreel to join the Archduke’s opponents in 1481. During the regency council’s reign, he made
financial and fiscal policy for the count. In an archival source from 1489, for example, he was
identified as the ‘first commissioner of the domain and finances’ of Philip the Fair.62 As I have
detailed elsewhere, the wide social support Moreel’s faction held in Bruges was a useful tool to
mobilise vital resources necessary for the political and military acts of the faction’s leaders.63 In
April 1485, Moreel’s brother Lieven bought an annuity of 4 lb. gr. (by voluntarily loaning the city 60
lb. gr.), while his brother-in-law, Jan De Keyt, bought a rente of 10 lb. gr. (for 150 lb. gr.).64 Another
key faction member, Jan van Nieuwenhove, lent 90 lb. gr., the same amount that his brothers-in-law,
Cornelis Breydel and Jacob Metteneye, lent to the city. While Bruges was in revolt against
58
In more prosperous times, investments in trade and finance could yield more than the 6 to 8 % interest which was
offered by cities (see, for instance, the study of H.-J. GILOMEN, “La prise de décision en matière d’emprunts dans les
villes suisses au 15e siècle”, in Urban public debt, p. 130-132).
59
D. STASAVAGE, States of credit. Size, power and the development of European polities, Princeton, 2011. See also his
“Cities, constitutions, and sovereign borrowing in Europe, 1274-1785”, in International Organization, 61, 2007, p. 489.
60
J. MURRAY, Bruges, cradle of capitalism, 1280-1390, Cambridge, 2005. See also B. LAMBERT, The city, the duke and
their banker. The Rapondi company and the formation of the Burgundian state (1384-1430), Turnhout, 2005.
61
DERYCKE, “The public annuity market” (see footnote 14), p. 179-180.
62
He is called “onsen lievin ende ghetrauwen raed ende deerste ghecommitteirde up tstijck van onsen demainen ende
financen” (GSA, Chambre des Comptes, nr. 13781, fol. 90r). About Moreel’s position in the revolt: Haemers, For the
common good, passim.
63
J. HAEMERS, “Factionalism and state power in the Flemish Revolt (1477-1492)”, in Journal of Social History, 42,
2009, p. 1009-1039.
64
The names of the creditors of April 1485 can be found in CAB, war accounts, nr. 4, fol. 100v-114r and 148r-149r; and
of June 1488 in war account, nr. 5, fol. 20r-30r and 148r-149r. The rentebrief of Lieven Moreel of April 1485 is
preserved in ADN, series B, nr. 2131, 69171.
Maximilian, 35 % of the moneylenders held city office. They provided 42.76 % of the total sum of
the annuity sales. Although the specific political allegiances of these moneylenders remain elusive,
their financial commitments are a likely sign of their familial and political loyalty to the ruling elite.
The presence of so many wealthy merchants and faction members among the annuity buyers in
Bruges confirms Stasavage’s argument that the entanglement of economic wealth and political power
in the ‘city-state’ provided an appealing basis for creditworthiness.
However, many Bruges annuity buyers in 1485 and 1488 did not hold office during the
1480s, nor can they be linked to Moreel’s faction. As there is no evidence of their background
available to historians, it is difficult to determine why they loaned money to the town at a low
interest rate. These people did not belong to the city’s political elite, but neither were they have-nots.
Scholars often refer to them as the urban ‘middle class’. While the designation ‘the urban elite’ of
Bruges includes the wealthy merchants, traders and landowners, the perhaps anachronistic term
‘middle classes’ denotes prosperous guild masters, skilled artisans, petty merchants and shopkeepers.
Schematically speaking, the first group ruled Bruges, but the middle classes also participated in
urban political life through their representatives to the city’s Great Council. In the major cities of
Flanders, such as Ghent and Bruges, the craft guilds had the right to appoint a specified number of
aldermen, which gave them a voice in the political decision-making process, although they still had
to struggle at times with the domineering merchant class for political and social recognition. Middleclass guildsmen thus had legal rights and economic privileges to defend.65 Moreover, they served as
an important group of moneylenders to the city in times of need. Derycke’s prosopographical
analysis of the Bruges annuity buyers in the last quarter of the fifteenth century has demonstrated
that they were crucial to the financial survival of the city, because they remained active in the public
renten market even after many foreign investors withdrew their support as they began to doubt
whether Bruges’ political and economic stability would last.66 This finding again confirms
Stasavage’s conclusion that the inclusion of consulting bodies in the urban government enhanced the
probability that more citizens, especially those from groups who were represented in that
government, would lend money to the city.
However, the sparse information surviving about these people suggests that specific political
reasons motivated middle-class people to provide the cash Bruges needed in the 1480s. In 1485 and
1488, there were few foreigners among the moneylenders (about 10%) and a large number of
unknown citizens (about the half of the moneylenders). Since there is no information on the social
background of most of these citizens, their potential status as members of the urban middle class
remains hypothetical. If they were middle class, however, they may have been members and leaders
of the craft guilds, as were other, identified, citizen moneylenders. In June 1488, for instance, Steven
van der Gheinste (a member of the mercers’ guild), Jacob Lason (a councillor of the bakers’ guild),
and Jan Marant (a member of the tailors’ guild) bought annuities.67 Most likely, these craftsmen
invested in the city’s wars because they supported the ruling coalition of Bruges, formed by members
of the Moreel’s faction and representatives of the craft guilds. This mighty coalition had taken over
power in the city during the revolt of 1477, was removed from power by Maximilian in 1485, and
resumed ruling the city in 1488. The principal concern of this coalition was to guarantee safe
conditions for Bruges commerce and policies that maintained the generous privileges enjoyed by
coalition members.68 The example of Diederik van Troyen shows that the political support of the
J. DUMOLYN, “Population et structures professionnelles à Bruges aux XIVe et XVe siècles”, in Revue du Nord, 81,
1999, p. 43-64; M. PRAK, “Corporate politics in the Low Countries: Guilds as institutions, 14th to 18th centuries”, in Craft
guilds in the early modern Low Countries. Work, power and representation, ed. M. PRAK et al., Aldershot, 2006, p. 74106; M. BOONE, A la recherche d’une modernité civique. La société urbaine des anciens Pays-Bas au bas Moyen Âge,
Brussels, 2010, p. 29-56.
66
DERYCKE, “The public annuity market”, p. 181.
67
Of 9, 2 and 2 lb. gr. respectively.
68
HAEMERS, For the common good, p. 226-228.
65
city’s artisans gave significant creditworthiness to the ruling coalition in 1488. Diederik was a
painter who was elected by his guild to serve on the city’s governing board in 1486, after
Maximilian’s faction had assumed power in the city. But a chronicler recorded that Maximilian’s
supporters would not accept Diederik as a councillor, because the painter had insulted the Habsburg
prince earlier while he served as dean of his craft guild.69 Following the February 1488 imprisonment
of the Habsburg prince, Moreel’s faction appointed Diederik as an alderman in September 1489.70 In
June 1488, he bought an annuity of 4 lb. gr. for 48 lb. gr. In May 1488 and October 1490 he also
loaned the city a total of 10 lb. gr. (without interest) to finance the war against the German emperor’s
army.71 Not surprisingly, when Maximilian returned to power in December 1490, Diederik was
punished.72 His case, and others similar to it73, show that the Bruges craft guilds coupled their
political engagement with significant financial support. They not only backed Willem Moreel’s
faction in its conflict with the Habsburg prince, they also provided the city with the means to pursue
the military campaign.
Why did they do this? In the specific context of 1485 and 1488, when foreign troops had
invaded the county of Flanders, we might presume that these citizens and artisans hoped that
supporting the city financially would assist in the success of its policies, such as driving away the
armies who threatened the safety of the county’s trade routes. But there was a more profound reason.
In Bruges, as in Ghent, urban privileges were at stake during the revolt against Maximilian.
Consequently, investing in the city’s struggle for the maintenance of these privileges in times of war
was not only about consolidating its political structure, but also actively taking part in the city’s
battle for political autonomy and the advantageous juridical status of its citizens, especially those in
the craft guilds. Therefore, creditors invested in the city’s financial initiatives because they were well
aware that maintenance of the city’s political structure was necessary to preserve their political rights
and powerful economic positions, as well as knowing that they had the power to control its spending.
Though the county’s representative institutions were dominated by the wealthy and powerful
merchant elite of its major cities, the middle classes of Bruges and Ghent seem to have supported this
elite in their war against a prince who wanted to diminish the power of the Estates over the political
and fiscal administration of the county. From this point of view, the creditworthiness of Bruges and
Ghent depended on their sincere belief in the righteousness of the war and the need to protect the
cities’ political structures.
Conclusion
This study confirms the conclusions of the historians who have nuanced the revolutionary character
of the financial changes in the sixteenth century. In 1480s Flanders, to paraphrase James Tracy, the
future revenues of a whole province were mobilized for an immediate need through the mechanism
‘Omme zekere injurieuse worden die hij sprac van den Roomschen conijnc als hij deken was van zijne ambochte’
(Royal Library of Brussels, Manuscript nr. 1132, p. 60).
70
In February 1488, the faction of Willem Moreel replaced the aldermen appointed by its rival faction in the previous
year (see R. WELLENS, “La révolte brugeoise de 1488”, in Annales de la Société d’Emulation de Bruges, 102, 1965, p. 552, and J. VAN LEEUWEN, “Balancing tradition and rites of rebellion: The ritual transfer of power in Bruges on 12
February 1488”, Symbolic communication in late medieval towns, ed. J. VAN LEEUWEN, Leuven, 2006, p. 65-81).
71
W. BLOCKMANS, “De belastingsbetalers te Brugge (1488-1490) en te Gent (1492-1494)”, in Studiën betreffende de
sociale strukturen te Brugge, Kortrijk en Gent in de 14e en 15e eeuw, vol. III, ed. W. BLOCKMANS, C. PAUWELYN & L.
WYNANT, Kortrijk, 1973, p. 276.
72
N. DESPARS, Cronycke van den lande ende graefscepe van Vlaenderen, ed. J. DE JONGHE, vol. IV, Bruges, 1840, p.
489.
73
Jan Mathijs, dean of the coopers’ guild, lent 3 lb. gr. in June 1488, and a considerable sum on other occasions to the
city (BLOCKMANS, ‘De belastingbetalers’, p. 255). Leonard Casenbroot, also dean of the cooper’s guild in the 1480s, lent
4 lb. gr. in 1485 and 2 lb. gr. in 1488 to the county of Flanders. Both were excluded from the general ‘pardon’ of
Maximilian for the city of Bruges in December 1490 (DESPARS, Cronycke van den lande, vol. IV, p. 489).
69
of credit. Just as Jaco Zuijderduijn has demonstrated that the ideas that inspired the sixteenth-century
Holland Estates to collectivize responsibility for public debt were in circulation during earlier
periods, this analysis of the sale of renten in Flanders in 1485 and 1488 against future receipts of tax
revenues emphasizes that financial ‘evolutions’ in other regions followed similar lines. Though I
eschew any form of teleology, which is often inherent in studies which posit ‘revolution’, it is clear
that results of the 1480s struggle kept the Flemish Estates from building on the institution of county
responsibility for the repayment of a public debt to institute a structural reorientation of that debt.
The uncertainties about repayment (because the Estates did not have enough time to formulate a
clear plan specifying which types of taxes were to be created to support the public debt), and the fact
that the annuities sales did not turn out as intended (because, twice, the opposition took power over
the county after the sale), shows that the conditions necessary for a Flemish ‘financial revolution’ (as
Dickson, Tracy and others have posited for other regions) were not met. Though representative
institutions in Flanders succeeded in borrowing money at low interest rates, based on the collective
responsibility of the inhabitants and the debtor’s high degree of creditworthiness, the initiatives of
1485 and 1488 did not evolve into a structural and regular funding of long-term debt, nor to a
thorough centralisation of public borrowing. The exact context surrounding the annuities sale
provides the explanatory factors. The outcome of war, political disagreement about the
administration of public institutions, and factional rivalries determined the results of financial
change.
As a result, this study shows that historians must take political and military factors into
account if they wish to explain fully why such financial changes happen and why the original
intentions do not produce the expected results. In particular, I argue that analyzing what motivated
representative institutions to transform the funding of public debt is indispensable for explaining the
evolution of financial centralisation. In Flanders, the Estates truly wanted to centralize public debt,
but only on their own terms. The Estates consciously chose to centralize the county’s defence and the
collection (and repayment) of the necessary financial resources, but they did not want to surrender
their traditional political autonomy. The joint decision to sell annuities on the whole county in 1485
and 1488 was actually counterbalanced by the cities’ separate sales organizations and disbursement
structures for the revenue. They wanted to keep a certain autonomy in their fiscal and military
policies. According to the Estates, the spending of public money had to be in the interest of the
county, and the introduction of fiscal measures to secure the repayment of long-term loans had to be
approved by its representative institutions. The preservation of these rights of political participation
formed the basis for sale of renten on the county, just as those conditions presumably persuaded
creditors to invest in the public debt. As other studies have shown, there were many reasons why
citizens bought the renten of urban and other governments. Economic investment, financial gain and
social motives inspired people to purchase annuities. The Flemish case suggests that political beliefs
also motivated potential creditors to finance the realization of their rulers’ decisions, since citizens
expected that those rulers would protect the citizens’ rights and liberties in return. The interests of
subjects, or at least those of their representatives, have to be taken into account if historians desire
full understanding of the evolution of medieval and early-modern state finances.
Appendices
A. Charter dated 16 April 1485
The regency council of Philip the Fair grants the Three Members of Flanders the right to sale
annuities at an interest rate of 1:15 for a total sum of 100,000 crowns. The Three Members also
obtain the right to levy taxes on the whole county to repay the interest on these renten.
A: Original charter in Ghent (CAG, series 94, nr. 733; copied in register G (series 94, nr. 7),
‘Cartularium Vrauwmarieboeck’, 49v-50r). The seal of the count has disappeared.
B: Vidimus of 30 April 1485 for the city of Bruges, sealed by the city of Ghent, after A
(CAB, political charters, 1st series, nr. 1205; copied in ‘cartularium Groenenboek B’, 51v52v).
Philips van Oostrijck, bij der gracie Gods hertoghe van Bourgoingnen, van Lotharingen, van
Brabant, van Lemburch ende van Lucemburch, grave van Vlaendren, van Henegauwen, van Holland,
van Zeellant ende van Namen, marcgrave des Helichs Rijcx, heere van Vrieslant ende van Mechelen.
Allen den ghonen die deze jeghewoordighe lettren zullen zien oft horen lesen, saluut.
Uute dien dat onze gheminde ende ghetrauwe voorscepene, burchmeesters, voocht, scepenen
ende raden ende al tghemeene van onsen steden van Ghend, Brugghe ende Ypre tsamen
representerende de Drie Leden van desen onsen lande van Vlaendren over ende in de name van
hemlieden ende van den ghemeene inwonende van denzelven onsen lande, ons in oetmoedicheden
vertoocht hebben dat alzo wel omme tonderhouden van onsen persoon ende van onsen state, als
omme tbescut van dezen onsen voorseiden lande ende graefscepe van Vlaendren ende te wederstane
de grote violentien ende overwillen die eenighe quaetwillende van ons ende denzelven onsen lande
hebben willen beseghen ende bij effecte claghelic te wercke gheleit up ons ende onse voorseide land,
bij brande, bij moorde ende anderssins zijdent den overlijdene van wijlen onser harder gheminder
vrauwe ende moedere, wiens ziele met Gode zij, omme tselve land tontreckene uut onser
onderdanicheit, zij hebben zonder yet te spaerne ende als goetwilleghe ende ghetrauwe ondersaten
hueren gherechtighen heere ende prince behoren te doene, gheexposert grote ende excessive sommen
van penninghen ten laste van hemlieden zelven ende den anderen onsen ondersaten ende inwoenende
van Vlaendren, zo ende in zulker wijs dat hemlieden van nu voortan niet wel moghelic en ware
ghelijcke lasten ende sommen te vulstringhene. Ende nochtans zo verstaen zij ende bekennen wel
ghemerct de continuatie van den voorseiden quaetwillende die zo lanc zo meer uute zijn onsen
voorseiden lande van Vlaendren uploop, violentie ende scade te doene, dat omme tselve ons recht te
behoudene jeghens de voorseide quaetwillende die te gheender redene verstaen en willen nood es
opene oorloghe an te nemene, ende meerdre cost te moeten doene, ende supporterne dan noch
ghedaen es gheweest ten welken zij gheen betre middele noch troost vinden en connen ter lavenesse
van onsen voorseiden ondersaten dan tghemeene van onsen voorseiden lande van Vlaendren te
belastene teenderwaerf tooter somme van hondertduust cronen. Ende omme die te vercrijghene, te
vercopene rente ten prijse van den penninc vijchtiene te lossene als zijs bet van staden wezen zullen.
Ende daerinne te verbindene hem allen tsamen alle de assisen, renten, erfachticheden ende andere
incommende goeden van den voornoemden onsen drien steden, van den smallen steden ende plecken
onder hemlieden resorterende, ende generalic van den ghemeenen ondersaten ende inwoenende van
desen onsen voorseiden lande ende graefscepe van Vlaendren waer die gheleghen of bevonden
zullen wesen ne gheene uutghesteken. Ende het zij zo dat de voorseiden exposanten naer hueren
previlegen ende vrijheden omme de welvaert van ons ende van desen onsen voorseiden lande
hemlieden ende de ondersaten ende inwonende van denzelven lande zouden moghen belasten alzo zij
segghen, nochtans in deze instantie zij en zoudent niet willen doen zonder onsen orlof ende expres
octroy daertoe eerst thebbene ons zeere neerenstelic daeromme biddende ende versouckende.
So eist dat wij de zaken voorscreven overghemerct kennende den baerblijckenden nood, de
jonste ende goede ghetrauwicheit die ons de voornoemde exposanten daghelicx doen ende tooghen
in tonderhouden van ons ende van onsen goeden rechte jeghen de voorseiden quaetwillende, wij bij
advise ende deliberatie van die van onsen bloede ende van onsen grooten rade neffens ons wesende,
denzelven exposanten in den name als boven, hebben gheconsentert, gheoctroyert ende
ghewillecuert, consenteren, octroyeren ende willecueren hemlieden oorlof ghevende bij desen onsen
lettren dat zij de ghemeene ondersaten ende inwoenende van desen onsen lande van Vlaendren
huerlieder goedinghen, de goedinghen van den voornoemde drie steden ende van den anderen
smallen steden onder hemlieden resorterende niet uutghesteken omme eenewaerf lasten moghen
tooter voorseide somme toe van hondertduust cronen ten prise van achtenveertich grooten onser
Vlaemscher munten tstic. Ende omme die te vercrijghene, vercoepen rente te lossene ten prise van
den penninc vichtiene ende daerboven maer niet daerondere. Ende daerinne te belastene de
voornoemde ghemeene ondersaten ende inwoenende van Vlaendren, de drie steden ende andre
smalle steden ende generalic ende specialic alle de incommende goedinghen van denzelven steden
ende van denzelven ondersaten ende inwoenende voorscreven. Ende elc over andre met behoorlicken
brieven, obligacien ende besegheltheden ter bewaernesse, dancke ende versekerthede van elken.
Ende oec dat de voorseide exposanten in den name als boven de voorseide somme van hondertduust
cronen de rente ende tverloep van diere zullen moghen innen, heffen ende ontfanghen up
tvoornoemde ons ghemeene land van Vlaendren bij pointinghen ende ommestellinghen up tselve
land ten daghe van den paeymenten ende anderssins al tsamen oft in partien naer huere discretien,
tallen tijden dat hemlieden dat expedient ende orboer dincken zal ende dat zij daertoe zullen willen
of moghen verstaen ter ontlastinghe ende meesten oorboere van denzelven onsen lande zonder dan
daeromme van ons te moeten hebbene andere lettren van octroye oft consente dan deze
jeghewoordighe, behouden de voorseide. Wel verstaende dat de meeste menichte van den voorseiden
poorters ende inghesetenen daerinne gheconsentert of noch consenteren. Ende oec dat de voorseide
somme van hondertduust cronen beleyt ende gheempliert worde ter bewaernesse ende meesten
oorbore van onsen voorseiden lande ende nieuwers el. Daerof de voorseide exposanten ghehouden
werden goede rekeninghe ende bewijs te doene ten tijden daer ende alsoot behoren zal. Ontbieden
daeromme ende bevelen onsen gheminden ende ghetrauwen president ende lieden van onser camere
van den Rade in Vlaendren, president ende lieden van onser rekencamere te Rijsele, onsen souverain
bailliu van Vlaendren, gouverneur van Rijsele, Douay ende Orchies, baillius van Ghend, van
Brugghe ende van Ypre ende alle andere onze justicieren, officieren ende ondersaten wien dit angaen
mach, dat zij den voornoemden exposanten van dezen onsen jeghewoordighen ottroye ende consente
ghelijc ende in der manieren dat voorscreven staet, doen laten ende ghedoghen rustelic, vredelic ende
vulcommelic ghebruken ende useren, cesserende alle wederzegghen ter contrarien want ons alzo
ghelieft.
In kennessen van dezen, zo hebben wij onsen zeghele hieran doen hanghen. Ghegheven in
onze stede van Ghend, den sestiensten dach van april int jaer ons heeren duust vierhondert
viventachtentich naer Paesschen.
[On the plica:] Bij mijnen heere den hertoghe in zijnen raed, daer mijnheeren van Ravestein, ende
van Romont, de heeren van den Gruthuse, van Reesseghem, de president van Vlaendren, ende andere
waren.74
[Signed: Jacob] Heyme
74
In order these were Adolph of Cleves, Jacob of Savoy, Louis of Bruges, Adrian Vilain, and Paul de Baenst.
B. Charter dated 1 June 1488
The regency council of Philip the Fair grants the Three Members of Flanders the right to sale
annuities at an interest rate of 1:12 for a total sum of 300,000 crowns. The Three Members also
obtain the right to levy taxes on the whole county to repay the interest on these renten.
A: The original charter was presumably lost.
B: Contemporary copies in ADN, series B, nr. 1287, 19154; and B 2137, 69601. These are
rentebrieven which include a copy of the original charter.
Philips, bij der gracie Gods eertshertoghe van Oestrijcke, hertoghe van Bourgoignen, van
Lotharingen, van Brabant, van Lembourg, van Luxembourg ende van Gheldre, grave van Vlaendren,
van Henegauwe, van Holland, van Zeeland, van Namen ende van Zuytphen, marcgrave des Helichs
Rijcx, heere van Vrieslant ende van Mechelen. Allen den ghonen die dese presente lettren zullen zien
oft horen lesen, saluut.
Voorscepene, burgmeesters, vooght, scepenen, raden ende al tghemeene van onsen steden
Ghend, Brugghe ende Ypre tsamen representerende de Drie Leden van onsen lande van Vlaendren
over ende in de name van hemlieden ende van den ghemeenen insetenen van denzelven lande, ons in
oetmoedicheden vertooght hebben dat omme tbescudt ende bewaernesse van onzen voorseiden lande
ende graefscepe van Vlaendren dat nu ter tijt zeere gheoppresseert ende overlast es bij den volke van
orloghen boven paeyse ende noch meer ghescepen es te werdene ter destructie ende desolacie van
onsen voorseiden lande van Vlaendren ende van onsen ondersaten van dien, van node es thebbene
ende tonderhaudene een groot ghedeel volcx van wapenen. Twelke niet ghezijn en can zonder
penninghen thebbene. Omme dewelke te vindene ende te ghecrighene ne weten gheenen anderen
middele dan bij vercopinghe van renten ten prijse van den penninc twalefve als zijs best van stade
wesen zullen tooter somme van driehondertduust croonen. Ende daerinne te verbindene hemlieden
alle tsamen alle de assijsen, renten, erfachticheden ende andere incommende goeden van den
voornoemden drie steden ende alle anderen steden van den lande ende graefscepe van Vlaendren, de
poorters van den zelven steden ende insetene van den lande voornoemt ende huere goedinghen waer
die gheleghen zijn of bevonden zullen wesen neghene uutghesteken. Ende het zij zo dat de
voornoemden exposanten naer hueren previlegien ende vrijheden omme de welvaert van ons ende
van desen onsen voorseiden lande hemlieden ende de poorters ende insetene van denzelven steden
ende lande zouden moghen belasten alzo zij segghen, nochtans in deze instantie zij en zoudent niet
willen doen zonder onsen orlof ende expres octroy daertoe eerst thebbene ons zeere neerendstelic
daeromme biddende ende versouckende.
So eist dat wij de zaken voorscreven overghemerct kennende den baerblijckenden nood, de
jonste ende goede ghetrauwicheyt die ons de voorseiden exposanten doen omme de bewaernesse van
onzen lande ende heerlicheden die zij gheerne in paeyse stellen zouden, wij bij advise ende
deliberatie van die van onsen bloede ende van onsen grooten raden gheordonneert omme de
expedicie van den affairen van onzen lande ende graefscepe van Vlaendren voorscreven, denzelven
exposanten hebben gheconsenteert ende gheoctroyert, consenteren ende octroyeren hemlieden orlof
ghevende bij desen onsen lettren dat zij de ghemeene poorters ende insetene van den voorseiden drie
steden Ghend, Brugghe ende Ypre ende andere van den lande van Vlaendren, huerlieder ende de
incommende goeden van denzelven steden eenwaerf lasten moghen tooter voorseide somme van
driehondertduust croonen ten prijse van achtendeveertich groten onser Vlaemsscher munten tstic.
Ende omme die te vercrighene te moghen vercopene, rente te lossene de penninc twalefve ende
daerboven ende niet daeronder. Ende daerinne te belastene de voornoemde poorters ende insetene
van den voorseiden steden ende lande van Vlaendren ende alle de incommende goeden van dien
ende elc over andere met behoorlicken brieven, obligacien ende besegheltheden ter bewaernesse,
dancke ende versekerthede van den copers. Ende oec dat de voorseide exposanten de voorseide
somme van driehondertduust cronen de rente ende tverloop van diere zullen moghen innen, heffen
ende ontfaen up ende over al tghemeene land van Vlaendren bij pointinghen ende ommestellinghen
up tselve land ten daghe van den payementen ende anderssins, al tsamen oft in partie naer huer
discrecien tallen tijden dat hemlieden dat expedient ende oerboer dincken zal. Ende dat zij daertoe
zullen willen of moghen verstaen ter ontlastinghe ende meesten oerbuere van denzelven onsen lande
zonder dan daeromme van ons te hebbene andere lettren van octroye of consente dan deze
jeghewoordighe, behouden de voorseide lossinghe. Ende wel verstaende dat de meeste menichte van
den poorters van den voorseide drie steden Ghend, Brugghe ende Ypre int ghuent dies voorscreven
es consenteren zullen. Ende oec dat de voorseide somme van driehondert duust cronen beleyt ende
gheemployert worde ter bewaernesse ende bescudde van onsen voorseiden lande ende nieuwers el.
Daerof de voorseide exposanten ghehouden werden goede rekeninghe ende bewijs te doene ten
tijden daer ende alsoot behoren zal. Ontbieden daeromme ende bevelen onsen gheminden ende
ghetrauwen president ende lieden van onser camere van den Rade in Vlaendren, president ende
lieden van onser rekenijnghe te Rijsele, baillius van Ghend, van Brugghe ende van Ypre ende alle
andere onze justicieren, officieren ende ondersaten wien dit angaen mach, dat zij den voornoemden
exposanten van dezen onsen jeghewoordighen ottroye ende consente ghelijc ende in der manieren
dat voorscreven staet, doen laten ende ghedoghen rustelic, vredelic ende vulcommelic ghebruken
ende useren, cesserende alle wederzegghen ter contrarien want ons zo belieft.
In kennessen van dezen, zo hebben wij den zeghele van onzer camere van den Rade in
Vlaendren hieran doen hanghen in de absencie van den onsen. Ghegheven in onze stede van Ghend,
den eersten dach van wedemaent int jaer ons heeren duust vierhondert achtendetachtentich. Aldus
gheteeckent bij mijnen heere den eertshertoghe in zijnen raed, daer mer Phelips van Cleven, de heere
van Reesseghem, de president van Vlaendren, ende andere waeren.75 [Signed] J[an] De Beere.
75
It concerns, respectively, Philip of Cleves, Adrian Vilain, and Philip Wielant.