A fourth circumstance hampered Guy. His nephew Jean II. of Avesnes never forgot that he was the eldest son of the eldest son of Marguerite of Constantinople, that the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in Christendom had pronounced in favour of his father's legitimacy, and that thus, according to the law of primogeniture, he was rightful Count of Flanders; hence he lost no opportunity of injuring his uncle, and was continually plotting against him. Moreover, Guy was at daggers drawn with several of his great vassals, such as the Lords of Audenarde and Gavre, and he was not beloved by the higher clergy, at all events by these of West Flanders. Thus it came to pass, in spite of his brilliant qualities, in spite of his all-round capability, in spite of his courage, his perseverance and his _finesse_, he failed in the noble task which it was his ambition to fulfil--to break from off the neck of Flanders the galling yoke of France--that his most cherished personal hopes were never accomplished; that he had to stand by with folded hands whilst poor little Phillippine, the child of his old age, the apple of his eye, was slowly done to death by Philippe le Bel, and that he himself, an old man broken down by insults and tears, at length died miserably in a French prison. It must not be supposed from what has been noted above that Guy was animated by the instincts of a tyrant; he had no wish to establish a despotism in Flanders--nay, he undoubtedly had the welfare of his country at heart, but self came first. When he was not blinded by his own personal interests, he showed himself a just and a benevolent prince, following in his methods of government the example of his predecessors, Jeanne and Marguerite. Like them he favoured industry and commerce, and to a certain extent the freedom of the towns, but he viewed with an evil eye the extreme independence of the great communes, the like of which existed nowhere else in Northern Europe, and he would have reduced their liberties to the same level as those obtaining in France. The jealousy with which the upper classes viewed the increasing well-being of the people was another item in the political situation of the day, and Guy endeavoured to exploit it for his own ends. The quarrel was not, as has so often been represented, a duel between burgher and noble, it was rather a tug-of-war between men of wealth and men of moderate means. On the one side were doubtless a certain number of rich feudal lords, but there were also allied to them almost all the great merchants and traders of the greater communes, and nearly all the higher clergy--in a word, the _majores et potentiores_, as Monachus Gandavensis calls them. On the other, the small traders, the lower clergy, and perhaps a sprinkling of the Court nobility.