In the struggles of the Dukes with the communes the nobles ranged themselves readily on the side of the former down to the close of Philip's reign-notably in Flanders, where Courtray had never been forgotten. Only very gradually under him, though more abruptly under his successor, the modern notion of the sovereign throned in majestic isolation superseded the feudal conception of the prince among his peers. To a large extent the change was doubtless due to the influence of the most splendid of contemporary Western courts. The pictures of its magnificence and luxury drawn by Jacques du Clercq and the elaborate episodes of feast and tournament, with which Olivier de la Marche loves to intersperse his narrative, bear out the assertion of Commines, that in the prodigality of enticements it surpassed any other Court known to his experience. In the Court guide composed by Olivier during the siege of Neuss where Charles displayed in the midst of war the stately ceremonial in which his pride delighted, he details the official system, and the elaborate etiquette which became the model of many generations. But the completeness of the external machinery furnished no safeguard against the venality and corruption inseparable from despotic rule, or against a dissoluteness of manners usually fostered by formal restraint. The lasciviousness, that pervaded the Court of Charles VII of France and made that of Edward IV a seminary of pleasant vice, readily found its way into the surroundings of Philip the Good, who had a large family of bastards, and mistresses by the score. The extravagant delights in which the nobles might share when not engaged in warlike service impoverished many and ruined some; and Charles the Bold's relations with his nobility were strained to the utmost by the military burdens which he imposed on them. Numerous defections followed, and suspicions of treason on the unfortunate field of Morat; only a handful of his nobles fought by his side at Nancy, and hardly any held out by his daughter in her hour of distress.
Of the relations between the Dukes and the clergy it must suffice to say that they were largely determined by considerations of interest, and drawn closer by the unpopularity of both prince and priesthood in the towns. Duke Philip contrived to place his illegitimate brother John in the see of Cambray, while two of his own bastards held the great ecclesiastical principality of Liege. Notwithstanding the Church's acquisitions of landed property, which here as elsewhere legislation sought to stay, the secular arm occasionally appealed to the spiritual for its aid against civic recalcitrance, and now and then supported the clergy when at issue with the towns. Yet such was the perversity of Charles the Bold, which left no section of his subjects ,to lament his downfall, that he, who at the beginning of his reign had protected the churches of Liege from sharing in the general doom of the city, was at its close generally hated by the Netherlands clergy, for having overtaxed them as he had their flocks.
