There were other members of this talented family of whom the record of
some of their labours has come down to us. Notably Matthew, a younger
son of Andrew Kelderman, who worked at Antwerp Cathedral under Herman De
Waghemakere from 1487 to 1498; his son, also Matthew, who migrated to
Louvain, was named city mason there and directed the building operations
of the Church of Saint Peter from 1503 to 1527; and Laurence, who plied
his trade, for the most part in Brussels, helped to build the _Maison du
Roi_, and was perhaps a nephew, perhaps a son, of the great architect
who planned it. The city records from which these bald facts have been
culled in comparatively recent years by those who have or have had the
care of them, divulge something of the nature of an anecdote concerning
Laurence Kelderman. We learn from certain entries in the town accounts
of Brussels that in the year 1513 he was mulcted 30 _florins_ for
wounding one of the amman's serjeants, and the same document informs us
too how it came about.
Kelderman and two other famous masons--Hendrick van Pede, the author of
the Town Hall of Oudenaarde, and Ludwig van Beughem, who later on built
for Marguerite of Austria the famous Church of Brow in Bresse--were at
this time at work, most fortunately for them as it afterwards turned
out, on the beautiful palace which the Count of Nassau was erecting for
himself in Brussels with that gold, as all men believed, which he had
wrung from the vanquished burghers of Bruges in 1490, and every evening
it was their wont, when their work was done, to drink together at the
Sign of the Star, a tavern of note in the Great Market, which seems to
have been at this time much frequented by men of their craft. To this
house of entertainment, then, on the 13th of February, at their
accustomed hour they repaired, and each man having bade the drawer bring
the liquor he liked best, they proceeded to pledge one another in
bumpers, but their potations that night were not destined to be of long
duration. Perhaps there was strife in the cups of some of their boon
companions, certain it is that one of them drew his knife, and, as luck
would have it, at the same moment the amman's serjeant walked in, who,
fearing mischief or feigning to do so, forthwith disarmed the fellow;
whereat our masons, enraged at this insult to a free citizen, hurled
themselves on the officer of justice, wrenched away his sword, and in so
doing inflicted on him a flesh wound. The offence, according to the
strict code of Brussels, was no light one, and serious consequences
would have undoubtedly followed had it not been for the Count of Nassau,
who, loth to lose the services of such capable workmen, exerted his
influence in their behalf, and thus they were quit with a fine. Later on
we find the names of two of the delinquents again associated, but in
very different fashion. When it was decided in 1532 to add to the Church
of Saint Gudila a new Sacrament chapel, the _Maîtres de la Fabrique_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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