Loys “le Hase” van Vlaenderen — Lord of Wessegem and Elverdinghe-Vlamertinghe

Loys “le Hase” van Vlaenderen — known in the Latin chronicles as Lodewijk de Haze, lord of Wessegem from 1372 — was the earliest endowed of Louis II de Male's nine documented natural sons. His career is the most narratively dense of any Maleani bastard in the chronicle record outside Victor's: six dated attestations in Despars's Cronijcke Vol. III span the years 1380 through 1396, supplemented by a continuous chancery paper trail running from his initial Wessegem grant in 1372 (ADN B 1273 stuk 10535) to the post-mortem regrant of his seigniories to half-brothers Victor and Robrecht in 1398 (ADN B 1604 fol. 184). He was killed at Nicopolis on 25 September 1396 alongside his half-brothers Louis Friese and Jan sans terre — three of nine direct bastards lost on a single day. Four documented natural children — Hector, Regnault, Kathelijne, and Joanna — carried his name into the early fifteenth century; no continuing line is documented past their generation.

Military Career and Council Service Directly Attested

By 1380 Loys was already in the field. Despars's earliest narrative attestation places him on 14 May of that year at the Torhout ambush, where in tactical partnership with Wouter, lord of Heyne, he intercepted the Ghent-Ypres relief column under Jan Boulle (Despars compendium B.1). The following spring he engaged the White Caproens — the white-hooded urban infantry of Philip van Artevelde's revolt — and routed some sixty of them. Despars's account of this 1381 engagement carries a parenthetical that fixes Loys's birth-year:

niet jeghenstaende dat hyder noch gheen XX jaer oudt en was

… notwithstanding that he was not yet twenty years old.

The phrase places Loys's birth after 1361, making him roughly contemporaneous with Margriete of Male (b. 1350) — Louis II's only legitimate daughter — though her younger half-brother by perhaps a decade. By 1385 he had moved from the field to the council. Despars's account of the May 1385 settlement names him among the principal lords of the realm ratifying the agreement (Despars compendium B.3); in the same year he is recorded as Captain of Biervliet alongside his brother Hector:

Mer Lodewijck dHaze, die capiteyn van Biervliet, ende Mer Hector zijn broedere

Sir Lodewijck dHaze, the captain of Biervliet, and Sir Hector his brother.

The phrase zijn broedere places Loys and Hector — lord of Voorhoute, master-list position 6 in Despars's enumeration of the Maleani bastards — firmly in the cohort of Louis II's direct sons. In 1388–89 Loys took the prize at the Paris tournament, in the same season that saw his half-sister Margriete van Vlaenderen † as wife of marshal Robrecht van Vaveringny (Despars compendium B.20). He was named to Louis II's deathbed testament at Brussels on 29 January 1384 as one of three adult bastard sons in circulation at his father's death, alongside Le Frison and Jan sans terre — Lichtervelde's threefold reading of the Brussels Trésor des Chartes, 2ème Série.

Evidence level: Directly Attested. Six independent narrative attestations across Despars Vol. III (compendium B.1, B.2, B.3, B.18, B.20, B.7) span 1380–1396, supplemented by Lichtervelde 1935 p. 50 for the 1384 testament attestation.

Dated Fixpoints in the Royal and Comital Host: Roosebeke 1382 and the Peace of Tournai 1385 Directly Attested

Two further dated fixpoints sit between the 1372 Wessegem grant and the 1396 death at Nicopolis, each preserved in the chronicle recensions edited by de Smet. The first is the autumn campaign of 1382: 'le Hase de Flandre' stands in the muster roll of the great French royal host that marched through Lille and crushed the Flemish revolt at Westrozebeke (Roosebeke) on 27 November 1382 — among the Flemish and French lords of the Chronique des Pays-Bas (de Smet, Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Tome III, p. 278). This places Loys on the comital-royal side at Roosebeke, in the field against the same urban revolt he had engaged at Torhout and against the White Caproens.

The second fixpoint is the Peace of Tournai of December 1385, the settlement that ended the Ghent War. 'Loys, bastard de Flandre, dict le Haze' stands among the noble guarantors of the peace in the French recension (de Smet, Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Tome IV, p. 311) — and the same appearance is independently attested in the Middle Dutch recension, the Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (Vorsterman, 1531), folio lxxvi:

…Phelips heere van Arele / Lodewi[j]c ghese[yt] die hase bastaert van Vlaendren / Gheeraert van Rasseghem here van Baesseroode / Wouter heere van Halewijn…

…Philip lord of Arele / Lodewijc called the Hare, bastard of Flanders / Gheeraert van Rasseghem lord of Basserode / Wouter lord of Halewijn…

The convergence is the point: the French and Dutch recensions give the same guarantor sequence in the same order — le Haze, then Gérard de Resseghem/Rasseghem lord of Basserode, then Gaulthier/Wouter lord of Halewijn. Two independent textual traditions placing Loys, by name and byname, in the same realm-level act is strong, non-circular corroboration. The witnesses differ on the exact December day of the peace (17 versus 28 December; conventionally 18 December), so the appearance is dated here simply to December 1385.

Evidence level: Directly Attested for both appearances (verbatim in the printed recensions, image-verified). The identification of 'le Hase / le Haze de Flandre' with Loys de Haze is Strongly Corroborated: the byname matches Gailliard's 'Loys van Vlaenderen die men hiet Hase,' both dates sit inside his documented 1372–1396 window, and no competing 'le Haze' of comital rank is attested.

Marriage and Territorial Holdings Directly Attested / Hypothesis

The Wessegem grant of 9 April 1372 — preserved as ADN B 1273 stuk 10535 — is the earliest dated primary attestation of Loys's seigniorial career. The transfer was forfeited land: the seigniories of Wessegem, Ursel, and Oostburg had belonged to Gerard de Moor before his condemnation and banishment for murder, and Louis II granted the consolidated package to his bastard son. Moelaert's 1973 reading explicitly corrects the Vredius and L'Espinoy dating of 1 April 1370 to 9 April 1372 against the underlying chancery folio. To these holdings Loys subsequently added the twin lordship of Elverdinghe and Vlamertinghe, the fiefs of Schuurveld and Vake, and — through his Landas wife — the lordships of Eine. By 1385 he was Captain of Biervliet on the Zeeland-Vlaanderen coast.

The 1380 act at Ursel — RAB Charters met blauw nummer 2100 — confirms Loys functioning as lord by spring of that year, with a seigniorial tribunal operating under his authority: the act references the aldermen of my lord d'Haze at Ursel in the Brugse Ambacht. The Ursel toponymic record preserves traces of his tenure in the place-name Haasakker (still on the modern landscape), though the underlying etymon — the animal, the family name, or the lord himself — cannot be settled from toponymy alone.

Loys married a daughter of the house of Landas. The marriage is consistently attested across Moelaert 1973, Rogghé 1968, and Lichtervelde 1935 — Lichtervelde reads the wife's father as the lord of Eine — but none of these secondary witnesses cites a primary document for the marriage itself. The likeliest primary attestation is L'Espinoy lib. 2 cap. 38 fol. 69–71, which Moelaert cites in passing but does not transcribe. A separate set of records places the mother of his four bastard children in Loo, near Veurne in West Flanders, attending the baptism of his son Regnault at Wessegem (Moelaert 1978). Whether the Loo woman is the Landas wife or a separate concubine is unresolved.

Evidence level: Holdings Directly Attested. Landas marriage Hypothesis on primary source — the marriage itself is consistent across three secondary authorities, but no primary archival document has been read directly.

Falsifiability: The Landas marriage identification fails if L'Espinoy lib. 2 cap. 38 fol. 69–71, when read directly, names a different family for the marriage or attributes it to a different Lodewijk. The marriage is independently corroborated through three secondary authorities, which constrains the failure mode to a transcription chain error rather than to wholesale invention; nonetheless, direct reading of L'Espinoy remains the load-bearing next step.

Death at Nicopolis, 25 September 1396 Directly Attested

In the autumn of 1396 Loys joined the Burgundian-led crusade against the Ottoman advance into the Danube basin. The army assembled at Vienna in late July and engaged Bayezid I's forces outside Nicopolis on 25 September. The encounter — the last great crusading expedition of the Western European chivalric tradition — was a catastrophe for the Burgundian command. Loys was killed on the field alongside his half-brothers Louis Friese (lord of Praet) and Jan sans terre (lord of Drincham). Despars's compressed Middle Dutch account of the casualty list names all three in a single sentence:

Mer Lodewijck, die chevalereuse bastaert van Vlaenderen, ghezeit dHase, met twee van zijne vrome broeders, te wetene: Mer Lodewijck, ghezeit de Vriese, ende Mer Jan, ghezeit zonder Landt, die heere van Drincham.

Sir Lodewijck, the chivalrous bastard of Flanders, called dHase, with two of his valiant brothers, namely: Sir Lodewijck, called the Frisian, and Sir Jan, called Without Land, lord of Drincham.

Three of Louis II's nine documented bastard sons fallen on a single day. Despars dates the battle to 27 September, but the standard scholarship — Vredius A.7 and Heuterus's Latin chronicle (tres Ludovici Maleani filii nothi) — places it on 25 September; the two-day variant is treated as a Despars-internal copyist error per the Despars compendium F.2. The triad attestation is the only contemporaneous narrative source that names all three half-brothers together at the moment of their deaths, and on its own settles both the cohort identification and the line-terminus question for Loys's branch: he left no legitimate children, and his four natural children are the entirety of the documented second generation.

Evidence level: Directly Attested. The Despars compendium B.7 attestation is corroborated by the Latin chronicle witness of Heuterus, transmitted via Vredius A.7.

The Sons: Hector and Regnault Probable

Two of Loys's four documented natural children were sons. Both were raised at Wessegem under their father's supervision, and both received fiefs in the post-mortem division of his estate.

Hector, named in the Wessegem domain accounts as sheren bastaerde Hector te Ursele (Moelaert 1973 p. 228), held the fief of Bortsant. He is distinct from the elder Hector of Voorhoute — master-list position 6 in Despars's enumeration of Louis II's direct bastards, the cohort member named with Loys at the 1382 garrisoning of Rypelmonde and Sastinghe (Despars compendium B.4). The confusion between the two Hectors is a documented onomastic risk for the second-generation prosopography; Rogghé 1968 footnote 71 sets out the source chain via Desplanque Inv. II 132–133 + 154 that distinguishes them.

Regnault — recorded in the household accounts as Reinierken, a diminutive of the name — held the fief of Le Vake. Moelaert 1978 preserves the domestic detail of his baptism at Wessegem: the mother travelled from Loo (in West Flanders, near Veurne) for the ceremony, and Loys constructed a hostel at Wessegem for her accommodation. The Loo connection, here documented in the household-management context, is what raises the unresolved question of whether the Loo woman is the Landas wife or a separate concubine.

Evidence level: Probable. Both sons are attested in secondary authority via Rogghé 1968 p. 252 footnote 71 (citing Desplanque Inv. II 132–133 + Inv. I 307 and Dehaisnes et Finot Inv. I 270) and via Moelaert 1973 + 1978; the primary archival folios at ADN have not yet been read directly to produce a contemporaneous attestation of either name in a charter naming Loys as father.

Falsifiability: The Hector–Regnault identifications fail if the underlying ADN folios cited in Rogghé and Desplanque, when read directly, attribute the fiefs of Bortsant and Le Vake to different individuals or place the second-generation transmission outside Loys's household. The secondary chain via three independent authorities (Rogghé, Desplanque, Moelaert) constrains failure to a transcription error rather than to fabrication.

The Daughters: Kathelijne and Joanna Probable

Loys's two documented natural daughters were joint tenants of a single arrangement: a house in Oostkerke parish and the fief of Le Heneede, together with a thirty-goud-franc annuity on the Ninove receipts. The joint tenancy is itself the strongest secondary witness to their kinship — sisters provided for in a single packet of arrangements, distinct from the separate fiefs assigned to the two sons.

Joanna married Jan van Prijzeel; the marriage is named in Rogghé 1968 footnote 71 without further biographical detail. Kathelijne's marriage is not recorded. A documented second-generation event for one of the two daughters is the wedding of Myns heren s'Haze dochter at Furnes on 22 October 1419 — attended by Loys's half-brothers Victor and Robrecht as the daughter's uncles (Lichtervelde 1935 p. 56 footnote 2, citing ADN B 43124 fol. 44v° and 58r°). The Furnes accounts do not name the husband; pinning his identity from ADN B 43125 fol. 18v° and 20v° is an open archival action item. The 1419 daughter could be either Kathelijne or Joanna; if the Joanna–Prijzeel marriage was the 1419 ceremony, the question collapses to one, otherwise the marriage was a second-generation event for Kathelijne.

The 1419 wedding is the only documented post-1396 event involving the Loys second generation in a comital-family setting. Victor and Robrecht's presence as uncles at a niece's wedding twenty-three years after Loys's death suggests the Maleani cohort maintained social cohesion across the half-brother network into the early fifteenth century — consistent with the parallel observation that Louis Friese's widow Marie van Ghistelle and Jan sans terre's widow Wilhelmine de Nevele both continued their respective lines through documented children (findings (b) and (c)).

Evidence level: Probable. Both daughters are attested in secondary authority via Rogghé 1968 p. 252 footnote 71 and Moelaert 1978; the Lichtervelde 1935 reading of the 1419 wedding preserves Loys's surname in the genitive (s'Haze) but does not name the bride.

Falsifiability: The Kathelijne–Joanna identifications and the joint-tenancy reading fail if the underlying ADN folios at B 43124 and B 43125, when read directly, do not preserve the kinship between the two named daughters or name a third Loys-daughter not in the secondary record.

Estate Disposition, 1396–1399 Directly Attested

Loys died at Nicopolis on 25 September 1396. The Wessegem and Ursel seigniories — held as a direct comital grant since 1372 — reverted to the duke and were regranted to Loys's half-brother Victor by Philip the Bold's act of 11 April 1398 (ADN B 1604 fol. 184). The Elverdinghe and Vlamertinghe lordships passed to Loys's other half-brother Robrecht, who held the dual seigniory from 1396 until his own death in 1434; the subsequent three-phase territorial story is covered on the Robrecht line page.

Loys's four documented natural children retained the four minor seigniories: Bortsant to Hector, Le Vake to Regnault, and the joint Oostkerke house + Le Heneede fief to Kathelijne and Joanna. None of the four documented children produced a continuing line, and the four minor fiefs are not traced in primary records past their generation. The Loys branch closes with the second generation: Hector and Regnault left no documented heirs, Joanna's marriage to Jan van Prijzeel produced no documented surname-bearing descendants, and Kathelijne's documentary trail ends at the joint-tenancy attestation.

Archival Evidence Summary

The primary attestations supporting the architecture above:

• ADN B 1273 stuk 10535 — Wessegem grant from Louis II to Loys, 9 April 1372 (corrected dating per Moelaert 1973)
• RAB Charters met blauw nummer 2100 — 1380 Ursel act referencing Loys's aldermen, attesting functioning seigniorial tribunal by spring 1380
• Brussels Trésor des Chartes de Flandre, 2ème Série, 1384, 29 Janvier — Louis II's deathbed testament naming Loys among three adult bastard sons in circulation (cited via Lichtervelde 1935 p. 50)
• Despars Vol. III pp. 6, 25, 114, 124, 147, 169, 173 — six dated narrative attestations 1380–1396 (compendium B.1, B.2, B.3, B.18, B.20, B.7; A.1 for the master enumeration)
• ADN B 1278 stuk 13983 — confirms no legitimate children; four illegitimate
• ADN B 1604 fol. 184 — Philip the Bold's 11 April 1398 regrant of Wessegem and Ursel to Victor van Vlaenderen
• ADN B 43124 fol. 44v° and 58r° — 22 October 1419 Furnes wedding of one of Loys's daughters, with Victor and Robrecht attending as uncles (cited via Lichtervelde 1935 p. 56 footnote 2)
• L'Espinoy lib. 2 cap. 38 fol. 69–71 — likely primary attestation of the Landas marriage; cited in Moelaert 1973 but not directly transcribed (open action item)
• Desplanque Inv. II 132–133 + Inv. I 307; Dehaisnes et Finot Inv. I 270 — second-generation source chain for the four documented natural children (cited via Rogghé 1968 footnote 71)
• de Smet, Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Tome III, p. 278 — 'le Hase de Flandre' in the muster roll of the 1382 French royal host (the Roosebeke campaign)
• de Smet, Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Tome IV, p. 311 + Excellente Cronike van Vlaenderen (Vorsterman, 1531), folio lxxvi — 'Loys, bastard de Flandre, dict le Haze' among the noble guarantors of the Peace of Tournai, December 1385, in two independent recensions with the same guarantor sequence

Open Research Questions

Five research lines remain open in this branch, all on the second-generation prosopography and the unresolved primary-source attestations for Loys's marriage and the maternal lineage of his four bastard children:

The Landas marriage at primary-source level

The marriage is consistent across Moelaert, Rogghé, and Lichtervelde, but none cites a primary document. L'Espinoy lib. 2 cap. 38 fol. 69–71 is the likeliest primary attestation; direct reading is the load-bearing next step.

The Loo connection

Moelaert 1978 places the mother of Loys's four bastard children in Loo (West Flanders, near Veurne), travelling to Wessegem for Regnault's baptism. Whether this is the Landas wife or a separate concubine is the central question for the children's maternal lineage.

Second-generation primary attestation

The four children — Hector, Regnault, Kathelijne, Joanna — are attested via a secondary chain (Rogghé → Desplanque + Dehaisnes; Moelaert → ADN). Direct reading of the underlying ADN folios would establish each as Probable→Directly Attested at the individual level.

The 1419 Furnes wedding husband

The husband of Myns heren s'Haze dochter at her 22 October 1419 wedding at Furnes is not named in the cited folios. Pinning him from ADN B 43125 fol. 18v° and 20v° is a candidate (α₁) surname-bearer lead — if the husband or his line carried the van Vlaenderen name forward through a son named after his mother's father, that line would be a previously-undocumented Loys-third-generation descent.

Bortsant, Le Vake, Le Heneede toponym tracing

The three minor seigniories assigned to Loys's bastard children — Bortsant (Hector), Le Vake (Regnault), Le Heneede (joint to the daughters) — are not directly identifiable on the modern West Flanders landscape. Standard toponymic resources (Verstraete, Moelaert's domain-accounts publications, Land van de Woestijne staten van goed) are the routes for tracing whether the three preserve documentary continuity into the fifteenth century.