of whom it was
said that she was esteemed whilst she lived, and mourned of all when
she died. Her brother, Philip, predeceased his father, leaving one
son, Robert. In accordance with local custom, Mahaut, on the death of
her father, inherited Artois, but her nephew, Robert, on attaining his
majority at the age of fourteen, set up a counter-claim. This family
feud was a constant source of trouble and vexation to her, since
Robert again and again returned to the attack, not only appealing to
the king to consider his cause, and fabricating spurious documents as
a means of gaining his end, but also employing unscrupulous agents to
spread false charges against her. He further took advantage of the
growing discontent amongst the nobles, who were gradually realising
that their power was waning, to attach them to his cause, and to
induce them to join him in harassing Mahaut by making raids upon her
lands and her castles. She, however, through her extraordinary
personality, was able to triumph over all this opposition, which, far
from marring, only seemed to add lustre to the work she had set
herself to do.

Mahaut was religious, artistic, and literary. All these
characteristics, together with the circumstance of wealth, she
inherited, and right well did she make use of her inheritance.

Being religious, and living in an age when the frenzy for crusading
had subsided and when architecture was the ruling passion, she
expended her zeal in building religious houses and hospitals.

Being artistic, she made her favourite castle at Hesdin, and the town
around its walls, a centre of art life. Here, seemingly, she favoured
all the arts, including to a certain extent music, then still in its
infancy, for although she apparently had no regular minstrel or
minstrels in her employ as was customary in the houses of the
noblesse, she seems to have engaged them for Church festivals and
sundry fetes, and we know that on one occasion she hired a minstrel to
soothe her sick child with the sweet soft music of the harp, thus
suggesting that she herself had felt the power of music to minister to
both body and soul.

Being literary, Mahaut collected what MSS. and books she could, and
the list of them serves to show what might be found in a library of
the early fourteenth century. Her religious books included a Bible in
French,[27] a Psalter, a Gradual, various Books of Hours for private
devotion, Lives of the Saints and of the Fathers, and the M