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 against her supporters, the Hoeks; their last fleet had been annihilated, and he was preparing for a decisive campaign against his seemingly indomitable adversary. At that time the recognition of Philip as next heir had been voted even in chivalrous Hainault, where Jacqueline had always been able to count on ardent loyalty, and where, amidst feudal conditions of life, only one or two towns-Valenciennes, and more recently Mons,—had developed their communal institutions. In Holland and Zeeland the towns attained to an advanced condition of prosperity and importance later than in Brabant, just as the latter had lagged behind Flanders. Yet, though the growth of the towns in the Northern Netherlands was relatively slow, neither was their commercial and industrial progress hampered, as was the case in Germany, by too close a control on the part of transmitted interests, nor was their political life, like that of the Flemish communes, handed over to the gusts of the market-place. As a rule, practical considerations led them from more to less broadly popular methods of government.

In matters of trade, on the other hand, the towns of Holland generally favoured freedom as against privilege and protection, and towards the close of the Middle Ages the single port in the Northern Netherlands which retained any staple-rights of consequence was Dort, whose ancient monopoly of all goods carried on the main rivers of Holland nominally outlasted the Burgundian period. But long before this Amsterdam, converted into a seaport by the formation of the Zuiderzee in the thirteenth century, had risen into prominence, and by the middle of the fifteenth she had left behind all the older towns of importance-Dort, Delft, Haarlem, Alkmaar, Middelburg, and Zierikzee -while among the younger Gouda, Leiden, Schiedam, and Rotterdam were likewise active centres of industrial and mercantile life. Few great noble families remained either in Holland or in Zeeland; but in the latter the small nobility was still numerous in the days of Jacqueline, and it was from them that the main strength of the Hoeks had been recruited in her wars, while that of the Kabeljaauws lay with the ruling classes in the towns. The vanquished cause, however, was consecrated in the memory of the people as having been that of resistance against the dominion of the stranger.

In no instance had his hand been heavier than in his treatment of the peninsula now known as North Holland, stretching out between the North Sea and the Zuiderzee, where dwelt the Kennemer, a primitive race of great and tried vigour, who clung to their liberties as they held fast to the fragments of land left to them by the waters. In Kenne-merland proper Alkmaar was the only town; with thriving Haarlem on their borders these peasants were constantly engaged in petty warfare, and it was from here that Philip proceeded on his expedition of. vengeance which reduced them to the condition of overtaxed dependents. A few of the mercantile settlements along the western coast of the