We first get a glimpse of the founder of Middelburg in the spring of the year 1452, when we find him, in company with Louis of Gruthuise, shutting the gates of Bruges in the face of a deputation of Ghenters who had come to beg that city to give them her support in their struggle with Philippe l'Asseuré, and afterwards, along with Gruthuise, going out to parley with them and trickily making them believe that they had attained the object of their mission. 'He was a man,' says the Flemish chronicler Chastelain, 'of much wealth and of much sense, and the most trustworthy person in the county of Flanders, although his honesty was not to the taste of all, and many, alike gentle and simple, grieved thereat.... He was, moreover, controller of the Duke's household, one of the four treasurers of the order of the Golden Fleece and but a plain citizen of Bruges. One excellent quality he had--he managed the Duke's affairs marvellously well; there, where there was rent or wound, he always found means to heal or mend, and he paid cash for all goods delivered at the palace. All this the Duke was well aware of, and on this account and for other reasons he gave him the high position he held. For in sooth he was a wise man, and one to be relied on, comely alike in person and in morals, and none more industrious and diligent than he could well be found.' [Illustration: THE HÔTEL BLADELIN] In the _rue des Aiguilles_ at Bruges there still stands a fragment of this worthy's town house. It is a spacious, picturesque gabled construction of tawny brick, with a bold octagonal tower of the same material crowned with a balustrade of sculptured stone and a beautiful crocheted steeple. Beneath a canopy of delicately-carved tabernacle work, which, in its turn, is sheltered by a more substantial canopy of lead and wrought-iron and oak, note, over the doorway, a statue of the Madonna and Child, with Bladelin himself kneeling in adoration, and, in a carved niche below, a shield displaying the arms which Philippe l'Asseuré granted him. This is a restoration of some five or six years since. The original work, save some fragments of the stone canopy, had totally disappeared, but drawings fortunately existed from which it was possible to construct a facsimile. Sir Peter Bladelin was treasurer of the Golden Fleece, and the emblems of this order appear over and over again carved on the great oak beams in the interior of his mansion.