Logo DBNL
Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Deel 95 (1980)

Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Deel 95

(1980)– [tijdschrift] Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Modernization of the Government: the Advent of Philip the Good in Holland*
H.P.H. Jansen

On the sixth of January 1425 John of Bavaria died. He had been a former bishop-elect of Liège in Belgium and had been for the last six years of his life in effect ruler of the counties of Holland and Zeeland. It is a moot point whether his death had been caused by a murder attempt on him during the previous summer, when sir John van Vliet had tried to do so by rubbing poison on the pages of his prayer-book. Then John of Bavaria must have had the bad habit of licking his fingers when turning pages. But I will not go into his now1..

The death of John of Bavaria cleared the field for the succession of Philip the Good in Holland and Zeeland. He was John's heir only to his personal possessions as the rightful heir to the government was Countess Jacqueline of Bavaria. But she was preoccupied with a hopeless military adventure to regain her lands from her estranged second husband John the Fourth, duke of Brabant, with the dubious help of her third husband, Humphrey of Gloucester, brother of the English king Henry V. The only person who could have denied Philip the Good the succession in Holland, was actually this second husband John, duke of Brabant; but he hastened to rid himself of these lands, as he had troubles enough at home. In July 1425 he was only too glad to appoint the duke of Burgundy as regent of Holland and Zeeland2.. A few days before this date, the Countess

Jacqueline had surrendered herself as prisoner to Philip who had confined her in the castle of Gent, the Gravensteen. It seemed that nothing could disturb his peaceful government in his newly-won counties now, but things radically changed when Jacqueline managed to escape from prison to start a guerilla from some outlying districts in the county of Holland, which lasted three years. Philip accepted the challenge and decided to fight. I will try to show in this paper that some changes were made in the institutions of the county of Holland during the war and sometimes as a result of the war. These changes were long overdue and have had a more lasting effect on the county of Holland than the spectacular battles and skirmishes between the troops of Philip and Jacqueline that already have been described so often. I shall restrict my subject to the county of Holland, as the development in Hainault was totally different and the archives of the province of Zeeland were for the greater part burnt in 1940. My story ends around 1433, when Philip succeeded as count in his own right, after having ruled jointly with Jacqueline since 1428, when he made peace with her in the town of Delft. For my exposition I made use of the unpublished comital accounts in the Algemeen Rijksarchief (General State Archives) at The Hague.

As I have shown elsewhere, the county of Holland underwent a structural change in the second half of the fourteenth century, when economically the emphasis shifted from agriculture to trade and industry and demographically from the country to the towns3.. The institutions however did not change. Originally Holland had been a part of Frisia4. and many of the primitive Germanic customs, prevalent since immemorial times in this freedom-loving tribe, did persist in Holland too. Some innovations had been introduced from the south, for instance: baljuws (baillis) from Flanders and town charters from Brabant, but many archaic institutions were retained, even after 1299, when the French-Flemish House of Avesnes acceeded to the government.

In many districts the scabini, the creation of Charlemagne, were not introduced until very recent times, in Rijnland for instance not until the year 1577. Up to this time the administration of justice outside the towns was exercised by the common neighbours, although some sort of archaic lawyer, an asing, travelled from court to court to help them with his arcane wisdom5.. In the higher courts of the baljuws, trial by battle was very common in the fourteenth century and the count kept a champion, an official duellist, on his pay-roll, who had to fight defendants in the courts in the name of the count. Actually there were two of them: one champion for the nobly-born and one for the common people, for it

would be degrading to fight against someone who was not one's peer6.. In most districts instances of the old Germanic peasant self-government persisted. Most villages chose one or more waarschappen, representatives who had to negotiate with the count and his officials and who also acted as trusted persons when some burden had to be distributed over the districts7..

I should like to treat two archaic institutions at some greater length: the practice of summoning the host and the system of collecting an aid, as they were interrelated and destined to be changed utterly by Philip the Good. During the fourteenth century and in the first quarter of the fifteenth, the ancient host of able-bodied freemen was regularly summoned on the same footing as must have existed since the origin of the county. In these early times all free-born men were summoned to come to the army conveying themselves in a special type of rowboat, a cog, to be distinguished from the big sailing-cogs used by the Hanseatic towns in the later Middle Ages. The army-cogs in Holland were rowed by 12, 20 or 30 oarsmen. Every village and town was assessed at a definite number, written down in lists of oars (riemtalen). The number of oars at which a village was assessed could not be increased by the count, it could only be diminished. Needless to say that it was not a fair system, as a village with demographic growth had a clear advantage over neighbouring villages with stable populations. Towns had the greatest growth-potential, and it would have been absurd if a town like Leiden with more than 5,000 inhabitants in 1400, would only send to the army the 24 men that were written down in the list of oars for Rijnland. Moreover the members of the town militia were better trained in handling weapons than the poor farmers from the countryside; in case of war the counts usually embarked on a round of negotiations with the town magistrates to obtain greater numbers. But the system was not ideal, and the counts clearly preferred to hire mercenaries if they could spare the money and incidentally they tried to commute the service at the host into a money-payment. However, they did not succeed to arrange these disorganized attempts into a working system8..

It is amazing that until 1428 the tax-system of the counts of Holland was also based on the deficient lists of oars. From time immemorial a yearly-schot was

collected from all the villages; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this was done by the various receivers. When the count in the so-called feudal cases (the knighting of his eldest son, the marriage of his eldest daughter, when summoned to the feudal court of his lord and of course on the occasion of his inauguration) had the moral right to ask for an aid, the county was not assessed for this aid on the basis of the yearly-schot, but of the number of oars according to the familiar lists. It was not possible for the count to have much influence on the height of the amount given. Most villages gave ten pounds per oar; in other districts the count knew beforehand that he could expect a lump sum. Kennemerland for instance always gave one thousand pounds; the representatives of this district collected the usual sums from each village. In the villages themselves the assessment on each individual was the work of the local waarschappen, sometimes aided by three or four of the richest inhabitants9..

In the fifteenth century it had become evident that the count could not live any longer ‘of his own’. Even the aids gained from the feudal cases were not sufficient in a time of almost continuous wars, from 1396 against the Frisians and against the lords of Arkel from 1401-1412. The counts had to introduce some sort of regular tax. It is the merit of Willem Eggert, treasurer from 1411 till 1417 that the finances of Holland were founded on a sounder basis. Then aids were introduced which were consented for a couple of years. However, the assessment of these aids was still to be made by the antiquated system of lists of oars, although in a few cases the towns and the nobly-born had to give one percent of their possessions. The same tax-system had been used in 1344-1345 for the whole county, when Count William IV exacted the so-called ‘Great Aid’ of 2 percent of everybody's possessions, but this tax had remained episodical and had not replaced the system of assessment by oars10..

Not until 1428, when Philip the Good had made peace with Jacqueline of Bavaria in the town of Delft, was the system radically altered. On the occasion of the Joyous Entry of duke and countess, the Estates of Holland granted an aid for ten years, for which every village and town was assessed on the basis of its wealth and the lists of numbers of oars were to be superseded by lists of numbers of écus, the fifteenth-century golden coin (schildtalen)11.. I do not believe that this

important reform in the tax-system was deliberately planned by Philip the Good, but I want to propose the thesis that this innovation was the accidental result of certain developments in Philip's war against Jacqueline of Bavaria. When the duke accepted the government in the summer of 1425, two years were still due of an aid for five years, granted to John of Bavaria in 1422, assessed upon the county on the basis of the time-honoured but deficient system of lists of oars. I must admit that the receipts show that some changes had been made. Each town contributed a fixed sum, which was probably the result of negotiations between count and magistrate. Kennemerland gave more than the accustomed one thousand pounds and a quick calculation on the receipts in Rijnland does not lead to the conclusion that ten pounds was paid for every oar. Some confusion is evident. In 1424 the receipts were entered into the accounts in a totally different way from what was done in 1426. In 1426 many categories were distinguished among those who had to contribute: the towns, the common people of the country, the nobly-born, the vassals and the monasteries, but almost everybody claimed an exemption and the result was that actually very little money poured into the ducal coffers as can be gathered from the pityfully small receipts noted in the second account of the treasurer Boudewijn van Zwieten12.. Duke Philip must have been dismayed. In this way he could not finance his wars and pay his mercenaries. As a sharp-eyed Hanseatic official remarked: ‘The duke did not care whether things went well or badly with the county, provided that he received sufficient money from the aids; that was his main aim in Holland’13.. However, it was out of the question that he might summon the host to fight in his wars, for the inherent dangers of this system had been made clear to him by the revolt of the peasants of Kennemerland in 1426.

The seeds of discord had been sown in the spring of 1425, before the advent of Philip the Good, when the people of Kennemerland had been summoned to the siege of the town of Schoonhoven, which had been surprised by the Hoeks, the party supporting Countess Jacqueline. The host of Kennemerland did answer the summons, but when ordered to dig trenches instead of fighting, they refused to do this ignoble work. The authorities had to hire wage-labourers; when they tried later on to recover from the peasants of Kennemerland the sums they had advanced, this lead to minor skirmishes and in the spring of 1426 to a great and dangerous revolt. The organization normally used when the host was summoned, now served to assemble an army of rebels who tried in vain to capture the town of Haarlem. Philip was not in Holland at the time of the revolt, but when he returned there in the summer, he decided to quench once and for all the freedom-

loving spirit of the peasants of Kennemerland. In expiation for their rebellion he pronounced a very harsh sentence: all their liberties were revoked and they were to pay enormous sums, in the assessment of which no mention whatsoever was made of lists of oars; the captains of his army simply estimated a maximumamount each village was presumably able to pay and to this maximum it was sentenced. The treasurer noted in his accounts that they also still owed some terms of the normal five-year-aid granted in 1422 to John of Bavaria, but he understood that they had to pay their sentence first and instead of payments due for 3½ years, he contented himself with the sums for 1½ years14.. A final article of the sentence forbade the possession of all weapons with the exception of simple bread-knives without points. This amounted to a prohibition to serve in the armed forces and put an end to the practice of summoning the host. When summoned to the host everybody had to carry his own weapons. If Philip forbade the peasants of Kennemerland to keep weapons at home, he denied himself the possibility of summoning the host15.. Obviously, Philip the Good must have foreseen the consequence of his sentence. As far as I can see, after 1426 the host has never again been summoned from the country in Holland, only the town militias occasionally had to serve in the wars of the duke.

With a great deal of improvisation an important institutional change had been inaugurated. The duke had given up the possibility of summoning the host, but had assessed a large sum of money upon a part of his newly-won county without making use of the time-honoured lists of oars. He only utilized the wealth and the paying-ability of each village. And this system worked. In 1426-1427 the treasurer managed to wring many thousands of crowns from the poor peasants. What had been possible in Kennemerland as punishment, could also be put to use in other districts for the good of the county. On October the first 1426, one and a half month after the sentence had been pronounced over the peasants of Kennemerland, the knights, towns and the common land of Holland were summoned to a meeting in The Hague to consent to the payment of 30,000 écus to maintain 1,500 mercenaries during half a year. The meeting had also to assess the money to which some of the knights, towns and villages could be taxed16.. The connection between this tax and the pay of the soldiers is very pronounced, as some of the towns and villages got the privilege to hand over their contributions

directly to a group of mercenaries without the intermediary of the central government. The assessment must have been improvised on the first of October during the meeting of the Estates of Holland. It was a hasty business; a lot of villages were simply ordered to pay a round sum, 100 or 150 écus. Evidently, it had not been possible to inspect the wealth and the paying-ability of any of the population-centres; the assessment must have been made on the basis of mere guess-work. As late as the 25th of October a messenger was sent by the duke to the towns and villages west of Rotterdam to let them know what sums they were due as part of the 30,000 écus, consented to on their behalf on the first of that month. The duke's officials showed themselves masters of improvisation. Already in the year 1425 they had introduced ‘soudijgeld en pondgeld’ (= soldiers-pay money and pound money), but the solution of October 1426 was apparently the most profitable.

In May 1427 the money was spent, but the war against Jacqueline went on and mercenaries still had to be paid. Philip the Good planned to leave Holland for Flanders, but before his departure he summoned the estates to his court to consent to the payment of 20,000 écus, to be used by his captain general Roeland van Uutkerke as payment for the army during two months. The duke must have put all his cards on the table. To make an end of the war, mercenaries were necessary and if they were to be kept in hand, had to be paid. The estates got the message, consented to the 20,000 écus, while some of the big cities promised to pay the soldiers an additional 25 days, even should Philip return somewhat later than planned. It was decided to use the assessment of 1426 with a few alterations. Villages that had not contributed then, were now assessed like the others. No difference was made between nobly-born men and common people, as was still the case with the aid of John of Bavaria in the years 1422-142717.. On Christmas eve in the same year Philip was even given an additional 75,000 écus, an enormous sum, by the knights and towns of Holland. In exchange the duke gave them an important privilege, probably his promise never to alienate or sell any part of the county of Holland18..

But on the third of July 1428 peace was concluded at Delft between the Lady Jacqueline and Duke Philip. On this occasion an aid was consented unto the duke and the countess of 50,000 écus per year for ten years. The Estates of Zeeland consented to half that amount. The duke and the countess expected to get both one sixth of those 75,000 écus for their personal expenses, as the remaining 50,000 would be sufficient to liquidate the various debts and to pay the normal costs of the administration. If the money had been properly and fairly

collected, their expectations would have come true, but this was not the case. The assessment according to the wealth of all the towns and villages was still unfinished and the treasurer and the various receivers had to improvise, as they went along.

To allow a fair assessment of the new taxes, it would have been necessary to conduct an inquiry in all the towns and villages of the county, as was made in 1494 and 1514 and to which we owe the interesting statistical data of the Enqueste and the Informatie, edited by Robert Fruin19.. Such inquiries were not uncommon in the lands of the Burgundian dukes; in 1395 one was ordered in the county of Flanders20.. It would have been normal if such an inquiry had been conducted in Holland and Zeeland in 1428 as well and for some time I have harboured the ambition to recover a copy of the results in the pages of some document of the Algemeen Rijksarchief, but this was a foolish ambition, for it can be proved that such an inquiry never took place in the period under discussion. In that year and also during the following years, assessment had not yet taken place in many cases. This must have cost the duke money. None of the knights for example had been assessed and that is the reason why the treasurer reckoned from them ‘nothing accepted’. On the villages in Rijnland the treasurer remarked

that until this day they have not been clearly assessed, because they were exposed to the war and the one has grown poor and another has grown rich. The treasurer has accepted from the villages so much money as he noted down in his accounts21..

It was not until 1432 that the baljuw of Rijnland Jan van den Burgh

is ordered to proclaim and assess the aid consented to in 1428, with the help of the lords of the village if there are any and of five or six of the richest and most conscientious men of the said villages, chosen and sworn in by the baljuw22..

Here again, the officials had to improvise. When the aid was granted in 1428 a

rough assessment must have been made by the towns present at the meeting of the estates, but this must have been full of lacunae and inequalities. In the years thereafter some of these deficiencies were mended, usually as a result of complaints by the people who considered themselves too severely taxed. It is possible however, that essentially the assessment of 1428 with all its defects might have remained in force until 1494, the date of the Enqueste which was edited by Robert Fruin in 1870. The talents of improvisation of the various officials must have been severely tried by this state of affairs.

These two important and interrelated reforms: the abandonment of the summoning of the host and the substitution of the lists of oars as the basis for assessing aids, by an estimate of the wealth of towns and villages, are the results of improvisation, if I am right. Another financial reform was more deliberate, in my opinion. I refer to the changes in the auditing of the comital accounts. Under the government of the counts of the House of Bavaria on the last page of each account a phrase was duly noted down, indicating that it had been examined by a committee of noble lords, members of the council, assisted by some clerks. Sporadically it might happen that, if the committee thought some item had been unjustly charged to the count, some lines in the accounts were deleted, but this remained an exception. I suppose that the books were rather cursorily checked and it must have been fairly easy for baljuws and receivers to cheat. We know that corruption was wide-spread in the Middle Ages. Before 1425 baljuws and other officials used to advance large sums to their predecessors when they were commissioned. I suppose that they could look forward to making an extraincome from corrupt practices to make the job rewarding. But as soon as Philip the Good had acceeded to the government of Holland, the inspection of the accounts became much more professional. The accounts of 1425-1428 were audited in August 1428 at Leiden by two officials of the Chamber of Accounts at Lille: sir Jean de Pressy and master Joost van Steeland23.. They made copious marginal notes in French and more than once their annoyance at the primitive financial administration of the officials in Holland becomes evident. It must have been far less easy now for officials to cheat and lapse into corruption, since they knew that at the end of their term of office they had to face these experienced accountants. In this connection I note in the administration of Holland under Duke Philip the Good a tendency to pay promptly, out of the official treasury, any debts that the duke owed to an official at the end of his term of office24..

Two other institutional innovations that can be placed in the first years of Philip the Good, have already been noted by other historians. They concern the estates and the council. In the peace of Delft of 1428 mention is made for the first time of the ‘Estates of the realm’. According to T.S. Jansma, it is possible from 1425 onwards to speak in Holland of estates, in imitation of the états in France. Since then, I think, the estates have a defined and explicit role in the granting of aids and in advising the duke. They were also consulted in the negotiations that lead to the peace of Delft. Briefly it can be said that the ‘Estates of Holland’ were recognized as an essential part of the body politic. The same can be said of the comital council. Up till 1428 it was a shapeless body, consisting of any nobles and members of the clergy who were consulted by the count; after 1428 Philip experimented with various councils, the members of which were entrusted with all the aspects of government and which kept their authority even if the duke was in the country. But it would take too much time to go into this25..

It is time to conclude. I think that it is safe to assume that from the start of the reign of Philip the Good in Holland, important and deepcutting changes were made in some of the county's institutions, especially those with regard to the count's finances. In my opinion Duke Philip did not follow a consequent policy of modernizing his newly-won possession. Some of the most archaic juridical institutions like trial by battle and jurisdiction by all the neighbours of a village remained in force. Philip the Good was genuinely interested in the potential of the counties of Holland and Zeeland26., but for the moment he was in need of as much money as he could lay his hands on and he was not averse to postponing the wellfare of his subjects to his financial necessities. The professional auditing and closer inspection of the comital accounts must have been deliberate policy, but the change of the assessment basis for taxes was, as I tried to show, the result of improvisation. Other reforms: the creation of a High Court of Justice and the establishment of a Chamber of Accounts were to occur later in his reign27..

Finally we should examine whether Philip's subjects were very enthusiastic about his reforms. The result of his tax policy probably was that they had to pay more and they probably did not like that. Still, most of the towns in Holland, when they had to choose between Countess Jacqueline and Duke Philip, deliberately chose the latter; they wanted a stable currency, they wanted protection against arrestation in foreign countries for debts of their sovereign

and they could in this respect have more faith in the great duke of the West than in Jacqueline with her reputation of irresponsable marriages and undertakings. Moreover, the new tax system made it much easier for the towns to put a greater share of the financial burden on the villages and the developing domination of the countryside by the towns was clearly accelerated after 1425. It is significant that even around that year the vroedschappen, the oligarchic circles that ruled the towns in the golden age of Holland, started to grow into closed bodies, who chose new members by co-optation. It is very likely that in the beginning of his reign the towns were rather content with Philip's performance and it was not until 1436, when Philip drifted into a war against England, that the first complaints were heard from the towns in Holland. But these years lay outside the scope of this paper.


Vorige Volgende

Over dit hoofdstuk/artikel

auteurs