That the Saviour of Brussels, as he was henceforth called, should have been esteemed at Court is sufficiently comprehensible: he had re-established the Duke on his throne; that he should have been the idol of the people was natural enough: through him they had reached the goal of their ambition; but that he should presently have been able to gain the goodwill of the very men whose hopes he had shattered, and whose privileges he had taken away, is a matter past comprehension, yet such was undoubtedly the case: he was premier alderman in 1365, and again in 1372, and at this time, be it born in mind, the old order of things having been re-established, the outgoing aldermen named their successors; after the reform of 1375, when the magistracy became elective, and all kinds of precautions were taken against corruption, and with a view to securing the best possible candidates, he still retained the confidence of the patricians, who named him premier alderman in 1377, and also in 1382; in 1375 he had represented the patricians of Brussels at the National Assembly of Braine-l'Alleud, summoned at the instance of the Bishop of Liége to put an end to sundry disputes between Winceslaus and his subjects, which were threatening civil war; on September 28, 1386, in spite of his seventy years, he led the men of Brussels to the siege of Gavres, outcome of a frontier trouble with Duke Henry of Gelderland; and, notwithstanding the disastrous issue of that campaign, he still retained the confidence of the patricians, who in 1387 again named him chief magistrate. It was the last time--before his year of office was out he came to a violent end. It happened thus. Sweder Van Apcoude, Lord of Gaesbeke, the last of the barons of Brabant who exercised sovereign sway and regarded themselves as the equals of the chiefs to whom they owed allegiance, traced his descent through his mother, Jeanne of Homes, to Godfrey first Lord of Gaesbeke, a younger son of Duke Henry the Warrior. Like many other peers of Brabant, Sweder was a citizen of Brussels, and as such, when his mother died, and his uncles disputed his succession, he had summoned them before the College of Aldermen, who, to their cost, had decided in his favour. From his father, a Dutch knight, and one of the mightiest vassals of the Bishop of Utrecht, he had inherited a large estate in Holland, which he had exchanged with his brother Giselbert for the barony of Aa, an extensive domain adjoining his own maternal heritage, and he thus became lord of a vast and undivided territory, which embraced two hundred manors, and extended from the walls of Ninove well-nigh to the gates of Brussels. Sweder was a baron of the old school, impetuous, violent, bold, within his borders his will was law, and, if need be, he could call to his flag three thousand men-at-arms.