Murder as »Good Lordship«

The occasion for this article is the recent discovery of the apologia thanks to which nobleman Frederick van Horn (1451–1487) managed to escape prosecution for the murder of Sir John van Dadizele (1432–1481). This request for pardon, an edition of which we include in the appendix, was sent to Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the husband of Mary, Duchess of Burgundy. It deserves scholarly scrutiny for several reasons. Firstly, the document provides a satisfactory ending to an academic »whodunit«. The murder of John van Dadizele has fascinated historians since the nineteenth century because it was a starting point for a decade-long civil war, the so-called Flemish Revolt (1482–1492). Secondly, and more importantly, Frederick’s request provides historians with an opportunity to study the deployment of the ideology of late medieval noblemen to justify something unforgivable: the killing of a loyal servant of the ruling prince, and the reaction of the prince to the criminal deed. Thirdly, our study suggests that medieval princes could be put in difficult positions by nobles who saw no conflict between two key tenets of the ideology of nobility, that is, on the one hand, a seigneurial entitlement to independent action, including murder, and, on the other hand, the discourse of loyal service to the prince and the Common Good – so much so that princes could come dangerously close to losing control.