comrades, and saying, 'Come
and hear the wise man's counsel.' On December 26, 1337, they came to the
house of the said James van Artevelde, and found him leaning against his
door. Far off as they were when they first perceived him, they made him
a deep obeisance, and 'Dear sir,' they said, 'we are come to you for
counsel; for we are told that by your great and good sense you will
restore the country of Flanders to good case. So tell us how.'

"Then James van Artevelde came forward, and said: 'Sirs comrades, I am a
native and burgher of this city, and here I have my means. Know that I
would gladly aid you with all my power, you and all the country; if
there were here a man who would be willing to take the lead, I would be
willing to risk body and means at his side; and if the rest of ye be
willing to be brethren, friends, and comrades to me, to abide in all
matters at my side, notwithstanding that I am not worthy of it, I will
undertake it willingly.' Then said all with one voice: 'We promise you
faithfully to abide at your side in all matters and to therewith
adventure body and means, for we know well that in the whole countship
of Flanders there is not a man but you worthy so to do.'" Then Van
Artevelde bound them to assemble on the next day but one in the
grounds of the monastery of Biloke, which had received numerous benefits
from the ancestors of Sohier of Courtrai, whose son-in-law Van Artevelde
was.

This bold burgher of Ghent, who was born about 1285, was sprung from a
family the name of which had been for a long while inscribed in their
city upon the register of industrial corporations. His father, John van
Artevelde, a cloth-worker, had been several times over-sheriff of Ghent,
and his mother, Mary van Groete, was great-aunt to the grandfather of
the illustrious publicist called in history Grotius. James van Artevelde
in his youth accompanied Count Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the
Handsome, upon his adventurous expeditions in Italy, Sicily, and Greece,
and to the island of Rhodes; and it had been close by the spots where
the soldiers of Marathon and Salamis had beaten the armies of Darius and
Xerxes that he had heard of the victory of the Flemish burghers and
workmen attacked in 1302, at Courtrai, by the splendid army of Philip
the Handsome.

James van Artevelde, on returning to his country, had been busy with his
manufactures,[46] his fields, the education of his children, and Flemish
affairs up to