'A Bad Chicken was Brooding': Subversive Speech in Late Medieval Flanders*

Abstract

In March and April 1477, the guilds of Ypres were in open revolt. They took advantage of the defeat and death at Nancy of Charles the Bold, count of Flanders and duke of Burgundy, to start a rebellion against the ruling patrician class and demand the restitution of privileges that had been abolished in earlier decades. Burgundian power was weak as the French king attacked its territory, and the new countess of Flanders, Charles's daughter Mary of Burgundy, did not have the means to suppress revolts in Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and other cities and towns in the Low Countries. In Ypres, guild leaders took control of the urban government and several of the privileges favourable to the craft guilds were restored. Once the Burgundian court had recovered and Mary of Burgundy had married Maximilian, the Habsburg archduke of Austria, the central power retaliated. In a joint action with the urban elite of Ypres in the autumn of 1477, the ruling dynasty started an in-depth investigation into the circumstances of the revolt's outbreak in order to punish its leaders. The prosecutor wanted to know not only what exactly had happened, but also what the rebels had said to each other before the rebellion had started. At some point, one Jan Wouterman, a draper, confessed that he had overheard two other men, Ghislain and Maylin Everaert, in conversation at the Ypres Corn Market. They had said they knew where ‘a bad chicken was brooding’ (‘een quaet kiekin broedde’). Wouterman was referring to some apprentice weavers who had secretly assembled in an inn at the market square around three tables, declaring that they would not take up work again until they had regained the old privileges.1