The scene preserved in this curious document furnishes a picture of a seigneur’s life in the country, and conveys some idea of the tone of the society from which Busbecq went forth to sketch the manners and customs of the East.
George Ghiselin II. died in 1561, leaving three legitimate children, (1) Jean Ghiselin, Seigneur of Bousbecque, whose name[52] is found amongst the signatures appended to a remonstrance addressed by the Estates of Lille to Margaret of Parma, against the decrees she had issued for enforcing the edicts of Charles V. for the suppression of heresy. He died childless, November 1578; (2), Marguerite Jacqueline Ghiselin, married November 28, 1565, to Jean Baptiste de Thiennes, Seigneur of Willersies; she died March 27, 1611. (3), Agnes Ghiselin, who succeeded her brother Jean in the seigneury of Bousbecque. She married Jacques Yedeghem, Seigneur of Wieze, captain, governor, and high bailiff of Termonde (Dendermonde).
These last had a son, Charles de Yedeghem, who became Seigneur of Bousbecque; from him, his uncle, the Ambassador, on December 18, 1587, bought a life-interest in the seigneury.[53]
Besides the children born in lawful wedlock, George Ghiselin II. had, by Catherine Hespiel,[54] an illegitimate son, who is the subject of this memoir, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq. The mother was an unmarried woman, in a humble position of life, and is supposed to have been a servant at the Bousbecque château. If this was the case, there is nothing surprising in the fact that she was at Comines when her son was born, in 1522; for it is hardly likely that her mistress would allow her to remain an inmate of the Seigneur’s house. In justice to George Ghiselin himself, it must be remembered that the standard of morality in Flanders, with regard to such connections, was not high, as is shown by Motley’s[55] description of a seigneur’s privileges in old times; and also by the fact that up to a late date they retained the right of legitimating their bastard children. At any rate, his conduct as a father was unimpeachable; he received the little fellow into his château, and gave him an excellent education.