Mechelen and the English Exiles

Mechelen, as this city is called in Flemish, and Malines for the Walloons, is a gorgeous place in Flanders, whose beautiful architecture echoes its distinguished past as one of the thriving centres of art and scholarship in the period of the Renaissance.

Back in those days, it was the city where Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, held court, and Anne Boleyn, the future second wife of Henry VIII, received part of her education, serving also as a maid of honour to the regent Margaret of Austria. 

Mechelen was twice sacked in the 15th cent. in the Spanish Fury and then the English Fury, the latter assault  carried out under the aegis Sir John Norris, a lifelong friend of Queen Elizabeth. 

Above the town buildings towers the imposing edifice of St. Rumbold's Cathedral, which the renowned French architect Vauban called the world's eighth wonder. It is a resting place for many illustrious individuals. 

Among them the Englishman John Clement. 

Clement was a reader of Rhetoric and Professor of Greek at the Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and following his study of medicine, became a doctor, and later president of the Royal College of Physicians in England.

He was also a tutor to Saint Thomas More's children, including Margaret Giggs, adopted by More, whom Clement would marry.

Margaret Clement, née Giggs, More's adoptive daughter - first on the far left. The man holding the scroll is sometimes identified as John Clement. Hans Holbein the Younger, Study for the Family Portrait of Sir Thomas More, c. 1527. Source.

In 1549, when Edward VI's Protestant rule became entrenched, Clement, who "always adhered scrupulously both to the doctrine and authority of the see of Rome,"  and his wife fled England for the security of the Spanish Netherlands. They went initially to Louvain, where there was already an English community, including some of More's children. 

Clement returned to England during the reign of Queen Mary, inter alia to regain his property, including - unsuccessfully - his library of 180 books. He supported himself as doctor.

However, when Queen Elizabeth I became the Sovereign of England, in 1558, Clement left his homeland for good. He settled in Mechelen, practising medicine until his death 14 years later. 

Clement was buried near the tabernacle in St. Rumbold's, a spot reserved for important folks, close to the grave of his beloved wife. Margaret, an accomplished scholar in her own right, who helped her husband in translations from Greek, predeceased him two years earlier.

Today's Belgium - it must be remembered - was a place of exile for many English Catholics.

I shall return to this topic, which is of interest to me (and I hope to the reader of this post) later on.