Shortly after Jacqueline's flight John, again short of cash, had summoned the Estates of Brabant to meet at Brussels, and the aldermen of Louvain, knowing very well that liberty could hardly be assured in the Court city, utterly ignored John's invitation and invited the Estates on the same day to assemble in their own town. It was a bold step, but the issue proved the wisdom of it: when the appointed day arrived a few stragglers from Antwerp and Bois-le-Duc betook themselves to Brussels, and representatives of the first and second order from all parts of the duchy flocked into the capital. They found it in a greater state of commotion than any of them had anticipated, for news had just come to hand of a fresh act of tyranny--the Duke had presumed to violate one of the oldest and most cherished privileges of the time-honoured Church of Saint Peter. Thus: Sieger, chief of the house of Heetvelde, was one of the mightiest nobles of Brabant in the far-off days of Duchess Jeanne, with whom he claimed kinship, for he traced his descent to a natural son of the great house of Gaesbeke, a legitimate though younger branch of the reigning family. The Van Heetveldes, in the course of ages, had acquired estates and manorial rights in all parts of the duchy; they were patricians, too, of Louvain, for a Heetvelde of bygone days had married a daughter of that city, and the status of patrician, unlike that of the feudal lord, was transmissible in the female line. Invested with all the rights and privileges of the various orders to which he belonged, at Brussels, where he habitually resided, old Sieger was too mighty a man to be loved; five _lignages_ banded together against him, and one morning he was found in the Grand' Place with his throat cut. Who was the actual murderer was never known, but Sieger's sons suspected a patrician called Nicholas de Swaef, and publicly charged him with the crime, and hence there arose a feud between the family of the murdered man and the family of the man who, as he had sworn, had been falsely accused of the murder. For years the streets of Brussels were the scene of their bloody conflicts. In vain the burghers of Louvain joined their efforts to the burghers of Brussels as mediators. At their instance Duchess Jeanne ordained that the quarrel should be forgotten, menacing with death any man who should venture to reopen it; but her threats were wholly disregarded, and after twenty years the Heetveldes and the Vanderstraetens[22] were still flying at one another's throats. At last, about Easter 1417, the belligerents agreed to accept the arbitration of Duke John IV., provided he gave his decision within a twelvemonth. For some reason or other he neglected to do so, and it was not till the 20th of June 1420 that he summoned the brothers Heetvelde to his presence and informed them that he was about to pronounce judgment. To this they demurred, on the ground that the stipulated time had long since gone by.