As it was at Brussels so was it in the other towns of Brabant, and notably at Louvain, the city, above all, where the aristocracy was the proudest and the most hated, and the proletariat the most turbulent and the most oppressed. In this hotbed of storm and suspicion, where class feeling ran the highest and class distinctions were the most sharply defined, it was in the ranks of the patricians that the people at last found a leader whom they trusted, and one who showed himself worthy of their trust. That leader was Peter Coutherele, Mayor of Louvain, and, as such, the first citizen of the first city of Brabant. Though on the paternal side he does not seem to have been a man of ancient lineage--his father, Godfrey, who was a member of the Council of Jurors in 1328, and again in 1339, is the first of the family of whom we have any record--Peter Coutherele was enrolled in the great landlord clan of Van Redinghem, and claimed kinship, probably through his mother or his grandmother, or through both, with the oldest and noblest houses of the Commune. His enemies said of him that his love of the people was born of hatred of his own class, outcome of private spleen, and that in making himself the champion of plebeian claims his first care was to feather his own nest; but whatever may have been the motives which inspired his action, there is this much to Peter's credit: to the end he was true to the cause he had espoused and to the principles he professed, and if he received large rewards, he at least did his work well. There can be no doubt that the ultimate triumph of democracy at Louvain was in the main due to his efforts. For four hundred years the constitution which he gave to his native city was the guarantee of the rights and liberties of all sorts and conditions of men. He was no wanton shedder of blood, he was very zealous for law and order, he always showed himself a just, a merciful, and a moderate man, and at last he died poor and forgotten.