Anthony, duke of Brabant, the brother of Philip, was not so closely restricted in his authority and wishes.  He led all the nobles of the province to take part in the quarrels of France; and he suffered the penalty of his rashness in meeting his death in the battle of Agincourt.  But the duchy suffered nothing by this event, for the militia of the country had not followed their duke and his nobles to the war; and a national council was now established, consisting of eleven persons, two of whom were ecclesiastics, three barons, two knights, and four commoners.  This council, formed on principles so fairly popular, conducted the public affairs with great wisdom during the minority of the young duke.  Each province seems thus to have governed itself upon principles of republican independence.  The sovereigns could not at discretion, or by the want of it, play the bloody game of war for their mere amusement; and the emperor putting in his claim at this epoch to his ancient rights of sovereignty over Brabant, as an imperial fief, the council and the people treated the demand with derision.

The spirit of constitutional liberty and legal equality which now animated the various provinces is strongly marked in the history of the time by two striking and characteristic incidents.  At the death of Philip the Bold, his widow deposited on his tomb her purse, and the keys which she carried at her girdle in token of marriage; and by this humiliating ceremony she renounced her rights to a succession overloaded with her husband’s debts.  In the same year (1404) the widow of Albert, count of Holland and Hainault, finding herself in similar circumstances, required of the bailiff of Holland and the judges of his court permission to make a like renunciation.  The claim was granted; and, to fulfil the requisite ceremony, she walked at the head of the funeral procession, carrying in her hand a blade of straw, which she placed on the coffin.  We thus find that in such cases the reigning families were held liable to follow the common usages of the country.  From such instances there required but little progress in the principle of equality to reach the republican contempt for rank which made the citizens of Bruges in the following century arrest their count for his private debts.

The spirit of independence had reached the same point at Liege.  The families of the counts of Holland and Hainault, which were at this time distinguished by the name of Bavaria, because they were only descended from the ancient counts of Netherland extraction in the female line, had sufficient influence to obtain the nomination to the bishopric for a prince who was at the period in his infancy.  John of Bavaria—­for so he was called, and to his name was afterward added the epithet of “the Pitiless”—­on reaching his majority, did not think it necessary to cause himself to be consecrated a priest, but governed as a lay sovereign.  The indignant citizens of Liege expelled him, and chose another bishop.  But the Houses of Burgundy and Bavaria, closely allied by intermarriages, made common cause in his quarrel; and John, duke of Burgundy, and William IV., count of Holland and Hainault, brother of the bishop, replaced by force this cruel and unworthy prelate.