$Philip II.$(Philippe l'Asseuré), = Isabel of Portugal _d._ 1467 | (3rd wife) | (1) Catherine, daughter = $Charles I.$ = (2) Isabel of of Charles VII. of (le Téméraire), | Bourbon France _d._ 1477 | = (3) Margaret of | York (sister | of Edward IV. | of England), | _d._ 1503 +--------------------------------- + | $Marie$, = Maximilian of Hapsbourg, Emperor _d._ 1482 | from 1493, _d._ 1519 | +---------- +-------------- + | | $Philip III.$ Marguerite, = Philibert, Duke (Philippe le Beau) Regent of | of Savoy the Low | (2nd husband) Country | from 1517, | _d._ 1529 | | | Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, Regent of the Low Country from 1557 to 1559 The great struggle between the patricians and the craftsmen was never again to be renewed. The former, now that they had lost their monopoly, dissociated themselves more and more, as time went on, from trade and from municipal affairs, and, becoming more and more chary in admitting to their order outsiders from below, were little by little absorbed in the ranks of the territorial aristocracy. Before two generations had passed away their numbers had become so reduced that there were not twenty-one patricians in Brussels qualified to sit in the College of Aldermen, and under these circumstances Charles V. deprived them of their last political prerogative: in 1532 he decreed that henceforth any nobleman, whether he were a member of a _lignage_ or not, should be an eligible candidate for the magistracy. The city was not indeed free from dissensions in the ages which followed, but the strife which divided the people was not the outcome of class hatred, but of differences of opinion in religious matters, and of the impolitic measures taken to restore religious unity by alien rulers, who had no sympathy with the customs and traditions of the Netherlands.