Very little has come down to us concerning its early history. The foundation stone seems to have been laid towards the close of Duchess Jeanne's long reign, probably about the year 1402, and the building operations must have progressed rapidly, for in the town accounts for the month of October 1405 divers sums are entered for the cost of gilding the summits--weather-cocks, doubtless, or something of the kind--of various roofs and towers, amongst them 'the tower opposite the _Maison de l'étoile_' of which we give a sketch on page 1; and in 1421 Philippe de Saint-Pol, speaking of the Town Hall in his letter to the Emperor Sigismund anent the trouble with the Germans, calls it '_un édifice très grand et formidable_.' At this time the east wing must certainly have been completed, and it was from the gallery over the arcade which skirts this portion of the building that Vander Zype and Saint-Pol himself were wont to address the mob. The building operations had been interrupted by the revolution, and they were not again resumed until the 4th of March 1444, when the little Count of Charolais (_Charles le Téméraire_), then only six years old, laid the foundation stone of the tower. Five years later, in 1449, Jan Vandenberg was named _Meester van den Steenwerke van den torre van den Stad Raethuyse op de merct_, at a salary of two _saluts_ a day, for which sum he undertook to prepare the plans, to supervise the work, and to hold himself responsible for its good quality. This is the first time that we find Vandenberg's name mentioned in the city records in connection with the Town Hall. He pushed the work on so vigorously that in less than five years it was done; nor had he any reason to be ashamed of the result of his labour: the steeple which he had raised in so short a time was one of the finest in Christendom, and, despite its fragile and lace-like appearance, one of the most solidly constructed. The story that Vandenberg on the day of its completion hurled himself headlong from the highest pinnacle, disgusted because he had not set his tower in the centre of the façade, is not only absurd on the face of it, but demonstrably false. In 1431, the date of the alleged suicide, the tower was non-existent, and fifty years after the true date of its completion Vandenberg was still alive; but, for all that, a tragedy did occur on that very spot and on that very day--at least so say the monks of Rouge Cloître, and they are generally to be trusted: no one went out of the world, but someone came into it.