When, in 1047, Godwin's son Swegen was outlawed, he too found shelter at
Bruges, and when, four years later, the great English Earl himself had
to flee his native land, he directed his steps to the same retreat. It
was, doubtless, at his palace in the Bourg that Baldwin entertained his
guests, and most likely the Crypt of St. Basil--sole relic of Bruges as
Godwin saw it--was the place where they went to pray. Here Earl Godwin
remained all the winter, busy with many things, anon negotiating a
marriage for Tostig with Baldwin's daughter Judith, anon constructing a
great fleet with which he would presently conquer the right to live in
peace on his native soil.
Shortly before Baldwin's death, another great Englishman came to
Flanders, perhaps to Bruges.
Hereward, son of Leofric, the last man who defied the right of the
Conqueror's sword. Here he found for himself a wife, and here he would
have ended his days in peace had not the insults heaped on his mother
called him back to England. With him there went a band of Karls, and
with him they laid down their lives at Thorney. If there had been in
England three men like him, runs an old rhymed chronicle, the French
would have never landed, and if he had only lived, he would have driven
them back to France.
About this time, too, there came to Bruges two other victims of the
Conqueror's ambition. Githa, Earl Godwin's widow, and his daughter,
Gunhilda. Of Githa's subsequent career we are ignorant, but Gunhilda
made Bruges her principal residence for nearly twenty years. Here she
died on the 24th August 1087, and by way of acknowledgment for the
kindness she had received at the hands of the burghers, she bequeathed
her jewels to their Collegiate Church--jewels so precious that, when
they were sold a century later, a sufficient sum was realized to pay for
its restoration. They laid her to rest in the cloister of St. Donatian,
and when, in 1786, her tomb was opened, they found therein a leaden
tablet, still preserved in the Cathedral of Bruges, on which was graved
the story of her virtues and her sorrows.
Baldwin of Lille was succeeded by his second son, Baldwin the Good. The
tumultuous days of his immediate successors and the harshness and
violence of nearly all the sovereigns who followed them, have enhanced
perhaps the glory of his good fame. Be this as it may, the old Flemish
chroniclers delight to dwell on the story of this gentle youth, but his
name is not linked with Bruges.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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