The constitution of the city was very free.  It was a little republic in all but name.  Its population was divided into fifty-two guilds of manufacturers and into thirty-two tribes of weavers; each fraternity electing annually or biennally its own deans and subordinate officers.  The senate, which exercised functions legislative, judicial, and administrative, subject of course to the grand council of Mechlin and to the sovereign authority, consisted of twenty-six members.  These were appointed partly from the upper class, or the men who lived upon their means, partly from the manufacturers in general, and partly from the weavers.  They were chosen by a college of eight electors, who were appointed by the sovereign on nomination by the citizens.  The whole city, in its collective capacity, constituted one of the four estates (Membra) of the province of Flanders.  It is obvious that so much liberty of form and of fact, added to the stormy character by which its citizens were distinguished, would be most offensive in the eyes of Charles, and that the delinquencies of the little commonwealth would be represented in the most glaring colors by all those quiet souls, who preferred the tranquillity of despotism to the turbulence of freedom.  The city claimed, moreover, the general provisions of the “Great Privilege” of the Lady Mary, the Magna Charta, which, according to the monarchical party, had been legally abrogated by Maximilian.  The liberties of the town had also been nominally curtailed by the “calf-skin” (Kalf Vel).  By this celebrated document, Charles the Fifth, then fifteen years of age, had been made to threaten with condign punishment all persons who should maintain that he had sworn at his inauguration to observe any privileges or charters claimed by the Ghenters before the peace of Cadsand.

The immediate cause of the discontent, the attempt to force from Flanders a subsidy of four hundred thousand caroli, as the third part of the twelve hundred thousand granted by the states of the Netherlands, and the resistance of Ghent in opposition to the other three members of the province, will, of course, be judged differently, according as the sympathies are stronger with popular rights or with prerogative.  The citizens claimed that the subsidy could only be granted by the unanimous consent of the four estates of the province.  Among other proofs of this their unquestionable right, they appealed to a muniment, which had never existed, save in the imagination of the credulous populace.  At a certain remote epoch, one of the Counts of Flanders, it was contended, had gambled away his countship to the Earl of Holland, but had been extricated from his dilemma by the generosity of Ghent.  The burghers of the town had paid the debts and redeemed the sovereignty of their lord, and had thereby gained, in return, a charter, called the Bargain of Flanders (Koop van Flandern).  Among the privileges granted by this document, was an express stipulation that no subsidy